Article April 12, 1913 Issue

MENTAL CHANGE

WILLIAM D. MC CRACKAN, M.A.

The world is undergoing a mental change. The evidences of expansion, invention, growth, progress, readjustment, and rearrangement which we see on all hands, are signs of this mental change. The building of great steamships and lofty buildings, the addition of mile upon mile of railroad, telegraph, or telephone, the installation of wireless telegraphy, the cutting of world canals, the storing of water-power,—these activities seem at first sight to be wholly material, to denote material achievement and material power. Such a view is, however, superficial, for it does not go back to the mainspring of action; it evades causation and contents itself with sequences and after effects, instead of probing origins and sources. Every outward manifestation of activity is due to a mental cause. Every house that is built, every road that is laid, points to a plan which has first of all existed as a mental concept.

In the hurly-burly of human activities we must never forget that man is a thinking being. It is to our advantage to enlarge upon this fact, to establish it in our own consciousness, and to reach the conclusion enunciated by the writer of the book of Proverbs so many centuries ago, that as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." There is a common temptation to think of man as a material being, buffeted by material conditions, subject to material limitations of time and space, a defenseless creature at the mercy of every breath of adversity, who has apparently come from and must eventually go into a realm of oblivion, the mystery of which no one has ever pierced.

This point of view and this prospect for humanity is anything but encouraging. Surely life under such conditions would not be worth living. To eke out a care-worn existence perpetually on the defensive against the material elements, fearful of their power, attempting to propitiate their ruthless energy, their heartless decrees and doings, such an existence were in fact no existence at all; it would be unworthy the nature of man created by an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent First Cause in His own similitude. This false sense of man's powerlessness before his foes is wholly wiped out by the recognition of man as a thinking being, the manifestation of divine intelligence. If intelligence can guide man, then we can overcome the adverse conditions which would endanger our health, happiness, and holiness, or completeness. By a spiritual transformation, which is based upon the understanding of God, we can change our processes of thought, and so become masters of our destiny, carve out our careers for good, protect ourselves from untoward environment, and rise superior to all evil that would bind or fetter our right activities.

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