Editorial January 1, 1903 Issue

The Challenge of Thought

Fancy that our thoughts, just now in "this fair companie," should break the restraining bonds of speech, defy discretion, ignore courtesy, throw off all the insincerity of tact and suavity, and speak for themselves right out, how would they bear the test? How many of them would brave the light, how many scurry back in search of concealment? The suggestion may seem grotesque, but it has been wonderfully helpful, and often has showed the startling, though perhaps unintentional, discrepancy between the half-expressed thought-impulse and the resultant speech. This fancied liberty was a call to watchfulness in the old way of thinking, but when, through the teaching of Christian Science, we come to see that man is right thinking, the reflection of infinite Intelligence, we recognize the enormity of the false claim of wrong thinking, its reversal,—darkening suggestions of unkind criticism instead of charity, hypocrisy instead of honesty, backbiting and personal censure instead of open, loving rebuke,—and we are more than ever impressed that we cannot be too careful to keep pure and honest this thought atmosphere in which we live, and move, and have our being.

In our conversation, the mental reservation with which we think to appease troublesome conscience is usually the measure of divergence between what we are speaking and what we should have the moral courage to speak.

Some one has warned us, "Guard well thy thoughts: our thoughts are heard in heaven."

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