Article March 29, 1919 Issue

Humanity is only just beginning to realize the sovereign...

The Christian Science Monitor

Humanity is only just beginning to realize the sovereign power a man may exercise over his own thought and action. It is no longer so universally believed that the state of a man's mind is largely determined by his physical or material condition, for the admission advances that thought is cause, not effect. Although this order, which recognizes thought as preceding condition and action, even that action which mortals have classified as involuntary, seems novel to this age, the teaching is not new, for Jesus the Christ declared that material conditions could not of themselves affect the man, but that, as he said, "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man."

While it is possible for every one to hold to right thought and to reject the wrong, to do so intelligently and uniformly, requires a knowledge of the Science of Mind, just as expert application of the rule of numbers demands some comprehension of mathematics. Through the use of human will, a man may, to be sure, concentrate upon any given endeavor, or he may, through the same agency, refuse to dwell upon unpleasant things; but in so far as he attempts to control and direct his thought through material will, he violates the fundamental postulate of the Science of Mind, that God is the only intelligence. So all that a man accomplishes through will power is to replace one trend of human thought with another quite as material and unreal.

To judge whether one is thinking aright, one must begin with God as the source of all real thought. Then he will see that divine Mind is manifested in thoughts which lead mankind toward the spiritual facts of being and into harmony and holiness. He will also learn that scientific right thought not only has power to establish his own sense of health, happiness, and prosperity on a spiritual and immortal foundation, but that it is also potent to destroy wrong thoughts and their effects for others. It was upon this understanding of God as the Principle of all true intelligence that Mrs. Eddy based her declaration, on page 252 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "Christian Science classifies thought thus: Right thoughts are reality and power; wrong thoughts are unreality and powerless, possessing the nature of dreams. Good thoughts are potent; evil thoughts are impotent, and they should appear thus. Continuing this category, we learn that sick thoughts are unreality and weakness; while healthy thoughts are reality and strength. My proof of these novel propositions is demonstration, whereby any man can satisfy himself of their verity."

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