Article August 3, 1918 Issue

The real story of a human life is the story of its supreme...

The Christian Science Monitor

The real story of a human life is the story of its supreme desire. It may furnish us with joy, or with sorrow, or even with amusement, but if the story is worth while it will also tell us of victory over self; the supreme desire must be proved to be greater than a mortal sense of self. The Bible is emphatically the book of the supreme desire and, of all others, it awakens us to the stern necessity of analyzing our desires, that is, it makes us think. Speaking for every one of us, it says: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

It is perfectly plain, however, that no one ever succeeded in enthroning a righteous desire without doing some very active thinking, perhaps discovering for the first time that something was necessary to life and happiness that human sense could not supply. Thus we are led to reach out toward prayer, and this reaching out is always a desire for an understanding of God, of infinite Mind. It should culminate in a supreme desire to learn to think rightly. It is, therefore, peculiarly appropriate that Mrs. Eddy says in the Preface of Science and Health (p. vii): "The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity." What, then, is it that thinks and what does it mean to be a thinker? If God, Spirit, is infinite Mind, it is easy to see that all true ideas are in and of Mind. Man's so-called thinking, is, therefore, but the reflection of Mind. To make right understanding, then, the supreme desire is to follow the example of Christ Jesus, set forth in the great words, "Not my will, but thine, be done."

Thus it becomes clear why the reflection of Mind, or the right and true thought, always exterminates error, since in Him, Mind, there is no darkness, no evil, nor error, at all. Now reflecting Mind, as Mrs. Eddy has discovered for us, is to think according to the rules of Christian Science, the Science of Mind, and this will always enthrone righteousness as the supreme desire. As the desire for righteousness is made supreme through the application of Christian Science, our capacity for understanding God is enlarged. Thus Science proves itself to be "the Spirit of truth" that guideth into all truth even as Jesus exemplified when he "opened" the understanding of two of his disciples during the walk to Emmaus.

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