Article January 22, 1916 Issue

Spiritual Thinking and Its Effect

CHARLES A. GRIFFITH

The editor of a well-known American periodical recently favored his readers with a lengthy editorial on the subject, "Why I am not a Christian Scientist." Had he but known it, any student of Christian Science could have given in one sentence a better reason, in fact the only reason, why he or any other individual is not a Christian Scientist. It is for the same reason that one having no understanding of the science of numbers and unable to demonstrate the laws of mathematics is not a mathematician. Any one who is able to demonstrate the Principle of the Science of being as did Jesus the Christ nineteen centuries ago, and as he commanded his followers in all ages to do, is a Christian Scientist, and strictly speaking, no one else can be. The act of becoming a Christian Scientist is not merely the acceptance of a creed. Neither is it the negative position of discontinuing the use of material remedies and ignoring the claims of evil in the forms of sin, disease, or discord of whatever nature, charging them all to Providence and imagining that the dear Lord will in some superhuman manner cause good to result from evil.

In the editorial referred to the writer says, "I dread the enervating influence on the human race of a philosophy which denies the reality of evil, calls men off from courageous, patient, and intelligent campaign against it, and bids them regard evil, whether moral or physical, as only a mortal thought to be vanquished by a process of spiritual thinking." Here the fact is worthy of observation that what the writer is pleased to term an "enervating influence" has during the past half century raised thousands from sickness to health, from immorality to morality, from want and woe to comfort and happiness, all by a process of spiritual or right thinking and in obedience to the Master's commands: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel;" "Heal the sick." This "enervating influence" is filling Christian Science churches with earnest students of the Bible, which through the light of Christian Science has become to them the Book of Life. Integrity in business has replaced sharp practice and questionable methods; happiness and contentment have found their way into homes where sin and despair once held sway, all as a direct result of the understanding of the nothingness of evil and the allness of God, good.

Christian Science is affirmative and positive in both nature and statement, and its effect is to negative the false claims of evil and expose their falsity. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" the obligation of the Christian Scientist is set forth in unmistakable language. On page 450 Mrs. Eddy writes as follows: "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good. Sickness to him is no less a temptation than is sin, and he heals them both by understanding God's power over them. The Christian Scientist knows that they are errors of belief, which Truth can and will destroy."

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