Article August 15, 1914 Issue

Mental Habit

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK

People do not sufficiently consider how very largely a man's mental habit influences, and in fact decides, his character, conduct, the circumstances which environ, him, and the whole tenor of his life. It is like the sap of the tree, like the tide that moves in the ocean whatever the winds or storms or sunshine above. It is like the magnet that draws the needle ever its way.

As we scrutinize the people we meet, we find the evidence carved upon their faces and crystallized in their speech and manners, whether they be habitually hopeful or despondent, genial or crabbed, kind and polite or cruel and selfish, helpful and happy or cynical and miserable. "As he [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he." It may seem much easier, of course, to form the better mental habit when we are young; but the belief in the rigidity of habit when our heads are thatched with gray, may be resisted and subdued successfully if we but persist in the habit of thinking rightly. We may invite and entertain as guests of our mental households, at every period in our lives, our constantly increasing powers to resist and thus subdue all phases and presentments of evil consciousness. The faces of many sickly people whom we encounter show as plainly as the colored glass changes the light of the flame within it, the distempering effects of disappointed ambition, and greed, and like blighting passions. As Paul wrote, "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

Let us consider the mental habit which is the offspring of the Christian Science doctrine and practice. It surely begets a serene and imperturbable faith that the ever-present government of the supreme power which rules man's destiny and being is absolutely good in all ways; it teaches us to realize in our daily thought the admonition of Jesus, "Have faith in God." This means everything; it is the potter's wheel that works day and night to better us. This helps us to obey the command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." We are no longer troubled by the consciousness of a perfunctory and elusive faith in the divine intelligence,—the wavering faith too often begotten of the teachings which present a self-contradictory deity. And right here too much emphasis cannot be laid on the supreme fact that we can surely acquire more and more "faith in God," and that we can learn more surely as we contemplate more and more the divine verities. It is thus that the understanding and realization of the one supreme power becomes a positive force in our consciousness to regenerate and bless.

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