Article February 7, 1920 Issue

The Test of Right Thinking

JULIUS L. BEER

It is generally agreed that the twentieth century has ushered in a new era of thought. Everywhere men are earnestly thinking, the more so since the recent world war has brought so many problems to the fore. Christian Scientists, as part of the whole human family and concerned in all things that conduce to the universal welfare, should at this juncture of worldly affairs strive most seriously for clear and correct thinking. Happily, through the teachings of Christian Science they have already learned somewhat of the government and guidance of divine Mind and the manner by which Mind's ideas may be apprehended and wrought out in life practice; therefore it will not be so difficult for them to achieve this desirable end.

The quality and character of all thinking determines its consequences. It is true in the mental realm, and there is no other, that "by their fruits ye shall know them." As all acts are preceded and controlled by thought, it very naturally follows that these acts are valuable or valueless, worthy or worthless, according as the directing and guiding thoughts are good or bad. Human thinking is not always wholly good or wholly bad; there seem to be gradations of thought, states or stages of thinking, ranging in varying degrees from the densely ignorant to the highly enlightened, from the vicious to the moral; but the essential nature of the thought in its totality will be expressed in the life of the person.

By general consensus of opinion, goodness is the touchstone, the criterion, by which a man is finally judged, and in this term are involved those virtues that inspire and guide the highest and noblest human effort and accomplishment. Whatever is considered best, therefore, is the product of the best thinking. Human thought, however, is largely predicated upon matter and based upon the belief in a mortal man and a material universe, and its system of philosophy is fettered by the checks, limitations, and imperfections of materiality. It is true that in some ways Spirit is acknowledged as a postulate by contemporaneous theology, but it is permitted to rest there, never being carried farther nor insisted upon as the actual living factor upon which the fundamentals of human conduct must necessarily be based. It is also true that in the latest expositions of present day natural science the confines of matter are being pushed farther back until we have new concepts, new terms to denominate those forces and energies that are supposed to lie behind the visible, material manifestation; but whatever their names or qualities, these forces are still found in the end to be but more etherealized and attenuated forms of matter.

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