Editorial December 5, 1953 Issue

CONCEPTS

Helen Wood Bauman

A concept is that which the mind conceives, a thought, an idea, a mental image. The word has special meaning for one who learns through Christian Science that consciousness cognizes only its own thoughts; that the material things one perceives through the physical senses are the concepts of those senses and not concrete objects having no relation to the consciousness perceiving them. In fact, material objects represent a way of thinking, a state of mind, a limited interpretation of the real spiritual universe, which is made up of the thought formations of divine Mind, God. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 71), "What seems to be of human origin is the counterfeit of the divine,—even human concepts, mortal shadows flitting across the dial of time."

This discloses the fact, which all must eventually acknowledge, that one is never dealing with anything but thoughts, and that true conceptions must always be sought in divine Mind. Since, as Christ Jesus taught (Matt. 10:36), "A man's foes shall be they of his own household"—since the mortal sense which claims to be one's self produces its own delusive concepts— the cure for sinning and woeful human conceptions must be a change of household, or consciousness, from so-called mortal mind to divine Mind, or Spirit.

Christian Science makes a clear distinction between divine Mind and the so-called mind which Paul described as "carnal" and as "enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). It shows the former to be the only Mind of man, the Mind which man reflects exclusively, and the latter to be a false consciousness, which dreams its own delusions but which is without identity, never touching the consciousness of man. By clearly realizing that the divine Mind is the only Mind, one is enabled to put off the obscuring mortal consciousness and to exchange mental concepts for divine ideas. In this process of exchange one's concept of man, body, law, home, church occupation, environment, and even of universe, takes on new substance and meaning.

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