Editorial October 14, 1922 Issue

Value of Spiritual Ideas

Duncan Sinclair

Christian Science lays the greatest stress on right thinking, and enables us to estimate the value of spiritual ideas. Until one gains, through the study of Christian Science, some understanding of the divine Mind and its expression,—spiritual ideas,—and learns how to distinguish between them and the counterfeit beliefs of mortal mind, he is unable to appreciate the value of these ideas. A right or true idea always has divine power; but it is only as one has an understanding of divine Principle, God, and consequently of Principle's perfect ideas, that one can utilize, scientifically, these perfect ideas in the destruction of false belief of every name and nature.

The value of a right thought or a true idea is readily seen in the correction of mistakes in everyday accounting. If a person make the mistake that four added to two make seven, how does he rectify it? Obviously, by substituting for the error the right idea that four and two make six. The simple truth corrects the mistake; and in applying it, as in this case, there is exemplified the value of a right or true idea. This is perfectly clear in the case of numbers; but to many it may not be so plain when they come to deal with certain other forms of error. Yet the rule always holds. Whatever is entertained in thought that is false can be destroyed by that which is true.

Christian Science is constantly proving that truth destroys error in every department of human experience. Indeed, people are being drawn to the study of Christian Science in great numbers to-day because of the proofs it is presenting that the spiritual understanding of God's ideas, which this Science enables one to gain, is potent beyond human surmise to destroy the errors of material sense, which to-day, as yesterday, are holding mankind in the bondage of sin and disease, and which precipitate the climax of so-called called death. Referring to "the right idea of man" in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 62), Mrs. Eddy says: "Holding the right idea of man in my mind, I can improve my own, and other people's individuality, health, and morals;" and a few lines farther on, she states, "Man is seen only in the true likeness of his Maker." What a power, then, in "the right idea of man"! As it is realized, it raises the status of mankind morally, improves the health of the individual, and enables us to clearly define man's real individuality.