Article November 16, 1907 Issue

When you say that Science and Health of the various...

Henry Deutsch

Duluth (Minn.) Tribunal

When you say that Science and Health or the various phases of Christian Science are unintelligible to a person in his "right mind," have you stopped to ask yourself whether you have really fulfilled the first requirements necessary to make it so or have you analyzed what is meant by "right mind"? The latter term is merely relative at best. The converse of it has been used through all ages as you have used it, to cast discredit upon those who disagree with us in opinion and more especially those who have the courage to voice truth opposed to our own particular ideas of things. As I recall, Mark Twain says, "Every step of progress in the world, whether in religion, philosophy, politics, or any other branch of activity, owes its inception to the idea of some man who was declared insane the instant he enunciated it? Is the picture of Christ on the cross yet erased from memory? Has the world yet recovered from its shame at the reception it gave Columbus, Galileo, Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and a host of others who have been reviled and persecuted even unto death for witnessing to their right sense of Truth?

Whatever its basis, you must concede that in some way or other Christian Science has been brought home to the understanding of unnumbered thousands,—not only those who have been healed of sickness, sorrow, and misery, but also many who have been regenerated and saved from sin, immorality, drunkenness, and other moral delinquencies, besides the many others who for the first time, through its realization, have put aside atheism, agnosticism, and infidelity and are now enrolled as earnest, conscientious soldiers of God under the banner Christ, Truth. This being true the question arises, What is "being in right mind"? It is surely a state of consciousness, is it not?

In learning a new language, it is at first utterly unintelligible to us when we are, relatively speaking, in our right mind, that is, in our usual state of mind, or, as we might say, in an "English" state of consciousness. Before we have learned the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and higher mathematics are incomprehensible to us in our then "right mind." The same test applies to our relations to any unstudied science, art, or department of knowledge. How do we make it intelligible, or rather come into a relation of "right mind" towards it? Is it not by working slowly, earnestly, and persistently until we imbibe the spirit of the language or other study, or until we begin to think in it,—make our consciousness in harmony with it,—by which operation it gradually unfolds, and step by step the unknown becomes the known; the unintelligible comprehensible? We then have a new "right mind," in comparison with which all who still live in the old consciousness seem "out of right mind," in the darkness of limitation.

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