Kate was well pleased, not only to make the Bible the foundation of this study, but to find Grace so changed, and so ready to look into sacred things. "Perhaps she will be converted," she thought, and from that moment she, too, resolved to look fairly into Christian Healing. She brought the concordance and found there was no reference to omnipresence.
"We'll look for present or presence," suggested Grace. She glanced rapidly down the columns and found a reference to Ps. cxxxix. and turned to that.
"Yes, in the seventh verse it says: 'Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence?' and here is a marginal reference to Jer. xxiii: 24. 'Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?' Now it seems to me that carries the idea of a personal Being," said Kate.
"Well, let us look up the references to God," suggested Grace again. "Here's one in Deut. xxxii: 4. 'He is the rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.' Yes, there He is compared to a rock. Of course that is symbolical, but find another. Isn't there one that tells of Him as spirit?"
"Yes, 'God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,' that is in John iv: 24, and in the first chapter of John it reads: 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.'"
"Ah! there we have it very plain; word is not flesh and blood or person. Doesn't it say in the letter that God is Intelligence, which is only another way to express the same thing?"
"Yes, and I remember when Jesus prayed for His disciples, He said: 'Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth;' and some place in the Bible it speaks of God as truth," said Kate, quite willing to give all the corroborative testimony she could.
"Truth can only be considered as principle, so we have that statement confirmed by the Bible, and that would agree with what Pythagoras wrote," said Grace, quoting: "'There is one Universal Soul diffused through all things, eternal, invisible, unchangeable; in essence like truth, in substance resembling light; ... to be comprehended only by the mind.' Now it is comparatively easy to see manifestations of the Good. By the way, I think it a volume of explanation in itself to say Good instead of God, don't you?"
"Well, yes, it does seem peculiarly expressive, but the old way sounds a little better yet."
"Of course," pursued Grace, "it doesn't matter so much what we call this omnipresent power, as whether we understand it. All humanity worship the same Deity in the sense of recognizing an omnipotent Power. I once read something comparing the ideas of God among the different peoples, and it was really wonderful how similar they were, excepting, of course, each nation had a different name for Deity. I believe I have that book now somewhere;" and Grace went to look for it, but presently returned without finding it. "Well, it made such a vivid impression on me that I remember a few of the principal statements. One was that the Hindoos teach of an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent Being called Brehm who is the creator of all things, from whom all things emanate and by whom all things are sustained. The Persians, Egyptians, Greeks held similar ideas. The Persians called God, Ormuzd, the Greeks, Orpheus, the Egyptians, Osiris."