Editorial November 7, 1914 Issue

Increasing Thoughtfulness

John B. Willis

Among the unnumbered brief, thought-awakening sentences penned by the author of Science and Health, none is more pertinently related to present human conditions than her declaration in the Preface that "the time for thinkers has come" (p. vii). In this Mrs. Eddy may have meant that there is need of great dominating nonconformists of her own type; but she surely meant more, namely, that the hour calls for increased mental alertness; that men shall escape from their enslavement to customary and traditional thought.

Christian Science does not crown or nourish what may be called world-intellectualism, but it does preeminently inculcate and conduce to exact, consistent, and vital thought, to the habit of considering the subject in hand from every needful point of view, and especially of regarding it in the light of the great fundamentals of Christian faith,—the nature of God and of His universe, including man, and the law and order of the divine government as revealed and demonstrated by Christ Jesus. It calls to men again in the words of wisdom, saying, "Come now; and let us reason together,"—let us consider the human problem as related to the truth of being, respecting which we can but agree. This fact characterizes its every appeal and gives it the highest educational value. Christian Science teaching is in fact both a philosophy of being and a philosophy of practical living. It removes the accumulated débris of fallacious thinking, on which men have vainly tried to erect stable structures, and having thus uncovered the immovable ledges of truth, it founds thereon a "building of God," fashioned and adorned "according to the pattern showed . . . in the mount."

The need of an acquired habit of more logical, more discriminating thought, is constantly being revealed to Christian Scientists in their contact not only with commoners, but with the cultivated. One is often amazed to find men of trained minds, and in a sense of scholarly instincts, who are attached to and contend for beliefs and opinions which will not bear a moment's analysis, and which show that they have not learned to think discriminatingly, or else are not disposed to do so. The responsibility for this fact lies largely with that mental torpor which is the prolific parent of stupidities, and that educated prejudice which ofttimes not only shuts but bolts the door against progress. Said a minister recently: "I note that when you Christian Scientists have a piece of furniture which needs repairing, you send for a carpenter and have it fixed. When I find that my body is out of order, I send for a doctor and have it fixed. What's the difference?"

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