Editorial November 20, 1978 Issue

Convinced of Truth

Geoffrey J. Barratt

A very valuable asset, spiritual conviction. It is a key element in the effectiveness of prayer. It can make all the difference between muddling along through life and living with steady dominion.

But what is conviction? Christian Science shows what it is and where it comes from. Spiritual conviction has its roots in the omnipotence of divine Mind, in Mind's consciousness of its own unchallengeable power. True conviction is spiritual in its origin, not humanly mental. It doesn't come from intellectual mortal reasoning or from autosuggestion. Writing of her discovery of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy speaks of her certainty like this: "Whence came to me this heavenly conviction,—a conviction antagonistic to the testimony of the physical senses?" She continues further on, "It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life; that human experiences show the falsity of all material things; and that immortal cravings, 'the price of learning love,' establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer." ^{ Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 108;}

We can't find genuine conviction in human speculation or just in human experience. It comes from the presence of divine law felt, felt to be the only factor in determining and maintaining the perfect nature of man and the universe. As we go along in the comprehension of Christian metaphysics, we prove more and more definitely that spiritual conviction must always overwhelm and outshine mortal "conviction"—mortal mind's aggressive arguments that the universe is materially atomic and that man is physical and personal.

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