Article December 14, 1912 Issue

MENTAL NEEDS

WILLIAM D. MC CRACKAN, M.A.

When mankind realizes that all its needs are primarily mental, it will no longer offer any opposition to the metaphysical teaching of Christian Science. The physical senses do indeed seem to witness to the reality of matter, but this evidence is circumscribed by its own nature, and material sense is incompetent to testify concerning the essential nature of men and things. What is it that is competent ot do this? Spiritual understanding only can testify to the real and the true, because it is born of God and its testimony bears the imprint of authenticity. God is Spirit, and His creation, man and the universe, must partake of His nature, must also be spiritual; then to know God, His universe, and His man, must in reality be a spiritual or mental process.

To understand God's law necessitates metaphysical action, and to do this is to neutralize and annihilate any laws supposed to antagonize His reign of peace and plenty. To understand His law means to put in practise that which is better than any physical hygiene or sanitation, to have at hand an infallible medicine, to rejoice in protection from disaster, to extract the sting of fear from every moment of test and emergency, and to recognize that there is no blind law of destruction which is capable of engulfing our right desires in a tidal wave of onrushing, resistless fury.

Christian Science does not deny the existence of a single object in God's universe, but it exposes as false the belief that these objects are material. It stigmatizes as unworthy of credence the supposition that God's law has no regard for man's needs, no compassion for his wants. On the contrary, Christian Science glorifies the law of God as wholly good, bearing in its train priceless benefits and blessings for humanity. God, as Mind, expresses Himself in ideas, and these ideas constitute the universe, including man. His law is mental, and the process of recognizing its activity must be mental also. Therefore the method of salvation, its ways and means, must be mental, and mankind, instead of clamoring for physical satisfaction and bowing down to physical concepts, must learn to realize that their needs are wholly mental, even though to personal sense these needs seem physical.

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