Divine Science Textbook – Chapter 3

Divine Science Its Principle and Practice
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Copyright 1957 by Divine Science Church and College
Denver, Colorado

Made available here by the ministry of
Rev. Lawrence C. Terry, M.Msc., D.Min.
P. O. Box 68324
Indianapolis, IN 46268-0324

Chapter 3 – Story of Progress

Long has there been a general belief that man is a being separated from God, even the belief that he is a creature essentially sinful in nature, doomed to eternal punishment unless redeemed. Man has considered himself to be an individual struggling to eke out an existence; searching for happiness through the turmoil of earthly life, while his God sits upon a throne in some far-distant heaven. God has appeared quite indifferent to man’s struggle, for He seems neither to intervene to prevent disaster nor to assist any individual, but allows events to take their due course.

No longer need man accept these old beliefs, for light is now shed upon the truth of man. The new thought reveals that man is one with God. Since God is All, then logically man is included within God and is one with Him and with all creation. Man accepting himself as a son and heir of God may learn to appropriate for his own use the attributes or inherencies of God – His wisdom, love, knowledge, understanding, power, life and joy. He may learn to use God-guidance, God-protection, and God-peace if he chooses to avail himself of his birthright.

This is the revelation that Divine Science brings to mankind for his joy and happiness. There are definite steps of growth and unfoldment necessary before the realization of this wonderful truth of oneness can be fully ours.

Be an earnest student; put into thinking and practice all that you learn as you proceed, and be expectant of results which formerly you would have thought unbelievable.

Chapter 3

God and Man are One

And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26

Questions to alert your thinking

1. What is creation as explained in Divine Science?
2. What new thought is given you as to the nature of matter or substance?
3. Are the teachings of Divine Science supported by modern scientists?
4. What attributes are inherent in the nature of God?
5. What must man do to claim his birthright?
6. What is man’s greatest need?

In order to understand and accept the truth concerning the reality of good and the unreality of evil, it will be necessary to consider the source or beginning of all that is. In order to reason aright we must determine the first and originating cause.

In the beginning God – God the Uncreate, the perfect Mind, the only source, the omnipresent Principle, the eternal Spirit – created. All is contained within  God, the perfect Mind, the cause of all that is, the source of all form. God, the Uncreate, creates. There is only god. God the Good, eternal and changeless; God the Good, the source of all, perfect and good; God, the beginning out of which were all things made which were made. “And God saw everything that he had made, and , behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31

Creation is the emanation of life and substance from the one original Source which can only be the infinite, omnipresent, eternal and changeless God. Creator being the Source is therefore the substance of its creation, as the fountain is the substance of its stream; as the tree is the source and substance of its branches and fruit; as the bay is one with the ocean of which it is an extension.

The emanation of the life and substance of God into creation must mean that the life and substance of creation is as perfect as that of the Creator, God Himself. The essence of all created things must, by logical reasoning, be eternal Spirit-Substance and the idea of each created form must be held within God-Mind in order to maintain existence. All creation is within the Creator, or Source, before coming into form, for in the Invisible is the eternal Idea of all that makes up creation, while in the visible is the expression or living form of Idea. Reason tells us that it is necessarily true that all living forms are included within Omnipresence, since Omnipresence embraces ALL within itself.

Creation is God in Self-manifestation. Divine Science explains the law and order of perfect God-Mind involving itself within creation, revealing itself in form as nature and mankind. “I am the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Rev. 22:13 The universal Spirit, the only life and substance is the beginning, the source. That which emanates from this One is the end; it too is Spirit, for there is but one presence, on life, and one substance. Creation is Spirit. Everything begins and ends as Spirit. God is omnipresent Principle. Principle is thus defined by Webster: “The source and origin, that from which anything proceeds; the beginning, the first.” It is first cause wherein we find the true nature of all things. Then with God as our beginning our nature is decided by His.

Divine Science has taught these truths from the time of its founding; has taught that Spirit and Substance are two aspects of the same reality, God. Divine Science has always taught that Spirit expresses by means of substance; it has always taught that so-called matter is pure divine energy manifested as form; it repeatedly points out that Substance is Spirit.

Divine Science feels a great debt of gratitude to the present day natural scientists and physicists for their discoveries which confirm the Divine Science position. Eddington, Jeans, and Millikan are out-spoken in their declaration that what has been called “solid matter” is in fact more space than solid and is very much alive since it consists of charges of energy vibrating about a central charge, like planets around a central sun. Many scientists state further that everything they have found points to the truth that “the universe is a great thought,” and that the stuff of which it is made is Mind-Stuff.

It is with the assurance of confident knowing that Divine Science teaches the concept of God as Universal Mind and man as a thought in that eternal Mind. It confidently affirms the following conclusions:

1. All substance is Spirit, eternal and changeless in essence. The outward form may seem to change, but the inner form, which is God’s thought, remains eternally the same. “ . . . whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it . . . “ Eccl. 3:14
2. All substance is one.
3. All substance is pure, whole, and perfect.
4. All is God and God in action.

Man then is eternally one with the infinite Source and in nature is the image and likeness of the Eternal as it expresses in living form. This is the truth of which Jesus was fully conscious for he declared, “I and my Father are one.” John 10:30 There is but one source of all, God. Man is one with God, hence he is like God. That which begins in Spirit is Spirit to the end. Since all that is has its source in Spirit, we can confidently say, “All is Spirit.” God and man cannot be separated. God is Spirit Universal and is expressed and manifest as living soul and body. Spirit contains within itself all souls and bodies before they are expressed, just as the vine hold branches and fruit within itself before they are expressed or pressed out.

All of man’s possibilities lie in the truth that is divine as is his Creator with whom he is one. He is one with God whose nature is love, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, power, life and joy. These are known as the inherencies of God, and they are the attributes which man inherits by nature of his oneness with God. Man is one with God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Think deeply of this.

Concentrated thinking upon the broadness of this thought brings out some degree of God’s infinitude, some idea of the fullness that is all in all. Try as we may, enlarge our thought of it as much as we possibly can, we can scarcely comprehend the fullness and infinitude of God. To illumine this idea and to start the stretching of our thinking, let us place before each of the inherencies of God the word, infinite, and after the word, omnipresent, in this way:

Infinite Love, omnipresent

Infinite Wisdom, omnipresent

Infinite Knowledge, omnipresent

Infinite Understanding, omnipresent

Infinite Power, omnipresent

Infinite Life, omnipresent

Infinite Joy, omnipresent

As words, these may be read off glibly, but to think deeply on each one opens man’s consciousness to a new realization of his Source and of his own potentialities.

There is only one Mind, one Substance, one Source, one Presence, one Power, one Life – All Good. Although Truth is omnipresent and changeless; although man lives, moves, and has his being in God, the All Good; although he dwells in the kingdom of heaven, if he is not conscious of it, he may go on his way lacking many things and losing the blessedness that IS his. “Heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ,” men may, through ignorance of the truth, be slaves of misery, doubt, and poverty. It is KNOWING the truth that makes man free. Man gives a sense of reality and power to evil when he fails to recognize that his source, his life, his very existence through time and eternity is God the Good. Truth must be recognized in order to be realized and to become a power in the lives of men.

Ignorance of the truth of his Being does not alter man’s true nature, for the REALITY of man never changes. Ignorance is the seeming great delusion of the world. It unknowingly takes things for what they are not;  that is, takes the expression for the Expresser, the body for the source of Self, the brain for the source of Mind, the letter for the Spirit and, in general, causes a sense of disorder or disease.

As students of science we start with a new concept of man, an idea which may be new to our thought, but which is eternal in Truth. As man understands that his true state, his eternal nature, is perfect since he is one with his perfect Source, he claims his own perfection as something innately his, implanted within him by the divine Mind, not something which he has earned or which comes to him from outside himself.

As his vision enlarges, the perfect unity between the Divine and all mankind is revealed to the consciousness of man. He begins, dimly at first, to glimpse the truth of his sonship; gradually he sees the everlasting nature of all things. The divine nature can never be lost for it is an eternal truth, and sooner or later everyone must awaken to its presence within him. Eventually each one will be able to say, “I am because God is, God is the reason or cause of my being, the source of my existence. All that I am must be found in God, and most truly I cannot be something that my source is not. My source decides my nature. The stream is like the fountain from which it flows.”

Jesus was quoting from the Old testament when he gave but two commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Deut. 6:5, and “ . . . thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself . . .” Lev. 19:18. These commandments are fulfilled as man recognizes the perfect nature in all creation. When we realize the oneness and divinity of Life in all things we sense a universal justice, strength, and harmony back of all creation which when understood will be expressed as love. Understanding that the whole of Truth must be found in infinite Mind, we have a standard by which to judge all things, a basis from which to reason of Truth. We now turn from appearances and “judge righteous judgment”; we decide what is true from our knowledge of an omnipresent principle of Truth rather than from a personal opinion or feeling. Whatever God is, is Truth.

All Truth is eternal in nature: true love can never change; true understanding cannot fail; true life can never end. This is all true now. Conscious awareness of the Truth and the opening of our hearts and minds to the acceptance of the fullness within our own nature is our greatest need. All good, wisdom, strength, life, health, love are ours now. Let us accept them.

Begin each day with an acknowledgment of omnipresent Good. Think of yourself as a son of God. Think of your children, your friends, and all persons, not as they seem by observation, but as they are in God. Think of them as that which is, was, and ever shall be; as that which thinks and knows; as that which the Expresser expresses perfectly. Know that what is true of God is true of you and of them. From this standpoint you can intelligently master the problems of life. From this standpoint it is right for you to accept for yourself all thought and feelings of divine love, truth, knowledge, power, harmony. By making this your daily practice you will partake of the free gift of eternal life; you will be remembering God the Good. Through this consciousness the healing of body and affairs takes place and Good is made manifest.

Divine Science Statement of Being

God is all, both invisible and visible.

One Presence, One Mind, One Power is all.

This one that is all is perfect life, perfect love, and perfect substance.

Man is the individualized expression of God and is ever one with this perfect life, perfect love, and perfect substance.

Statements of Truth

God is omnipresent Principle.

“Principle is the source and origin, that from which anything proceeds; the beginning, the first.” –Webster

Man is a spiritual Being, the image and likeness of God.

Man is the perfect manifestation of a perfect God.

Man’s consciousness is the activity of God-Mind.

I live now by the life that is omnipresent and full of power.

In all that I do this day, perfect Mind, ever active, thinks me, moves me, lives me as part of itself.

I am immortal Spirit, incorruptible, changeless, harmonious, strong in thought and body, living, trusting, resting in the freedom and fullness of perfect Life.

Questions for Review and Discussion

1. How does a broader understanding change your viewpoint?
2. What is the standard for righteous judgment?
3. Is Truth changeable? Support your answer.
4. New realization means new thinking and new reactions. Explain.
5. Can you now accept the unreality of evil?

Chapter 4

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Divine Science – Its Principle and Practice from the writings of Nona Brooks and Malinda Cramer

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