Law

IT is only a tiny word, but it has great significance. Everyone realizes that without just laws and respect for them, a society falls apart and tyranny steps in. Human laws are classified in various ways--civil law, criminal law, the laws of physical science, and so forth. They have their uses, and are added to or discarded as need, or new discovery, dictates. But what of God's law, the law that governs life itself? It must be the law infinitely superior to all others; worthy of our best efforts to find it and to live in accord with it. Mathematics provides a useful analogy. It is universal, never absent, always accurate--its rules never let one down. The most accomplished mathematician knows that without these rules he could not check even his grocery bill, let alone calculate a flight path to the moon. Just so, but infinitely more so, it is with the law of God, infinite divine Love. Its gentle but insistent thunder fills the universe with ever-available blessings. The Bible is the book of divine law. It records the happy effects that follow adherence to this law and the disastrous results that follow disobedience. It speaks not of a God whose law changes from day to day according to whim, but of one the Bible describes as having ``no variableness, neither shadow of turning.'' 1 Human society punishes breaches of its laws, but God does not have to decide whether to punish disobedience to His law. Such disobedience carries and exacts its own penalty. The rules of mathematics do not decide whether or not to demand a penalty for mistakes; the errors and their results are themselves the penalty. Divine law is embodied in the First Commandment, ``Thou shalt have no other gods before me.'' 2 The tragic effects of elevating materialism, the love of money, unbridled ambition or power, to the status of personal gods are plain for all with eyes to see. What has Christian Science to do with divine law? In a word, everything. In response to the question ``How would you define Christian Science?'' its Discoverer and Founder, Mary Baker Eddy, says, ``As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony.'' 3 A God whose law was not scientific in the highest possible sense, unchanging and unchangeable, could never be God; He would be inconsistent, unreliable. Mankind's desperate need is to understand, not a manlike god who, as a result of his circumscribed nature, could not be God, but God Himself, who is infinite Spirit. It could be said that the rules of mathematics, when allowed to shine in human thought, minister to our mathematical needs and naturally correct our mistakes. Infinitely more so does the law of God, infinite Love, shining in and through the thought of those who know, love, and lean upon Him, reveal the spiritual, unflawed, real nature of man. This lightens human existence and brings healing to mortal bodies by removing the fears that ungodlike thinking breeds. Such reasoning brings change to the general view of prayer. Repeatedly to pray to God--who must already be the source of infinite peace--in the hope that somehow He will be persuaded to grant it to humanity, misses the mark. Peace is already granted--it is already the universal, ever-present law of infinite Love, which is God. It's the spiritual reality of existence. Prayer therefore is a matter of bringing thought and action into accord with the perfect law of God, which necessarily and naturally brings its own reward, including the longed-for peace. The law of God is good, overruling evil and maintaining harmony. The prophet Jeremiah represents God as saying, ``I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. . . . And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.'' 4 1 James 1:17. 2 Exodus 20:3. 3 Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1. 4 Jeremiah 29:11, 13.