Article February 18, 1922 Issue

Self-Knowledge

ROBERT E. KEY

In "Miscellaneous Writings," in an article entitled "The Way," Mrs. Eddy has pointed out the first step toward instantaneous healing to be self-knowledge. It is obvious that an individual who expresses certain characteristics becomes so accustomed to them that in time he regards them as a natural part of himself, in fact as part of his own thinking; and should they be evil characteristics and remain uncorrected, he is, in course of time, likely to suffer from their effects. For instance, a dishonest thought may become a dishonest act, and a dishonest act may eventually be manifested as a theft; and as a natural sequence, the individual accepting this state of mind as his own is designated a thief.

Christian Science probes error to the bottom, and discloses the mental nature of disease and crime. In this way it is cause instead of effect that is dealt with, and by removing the supposed cause it is possible not only to reform the sinner but also to heal the sick. Some one may say: Yes, I agree that crime is the result of wrong thinking, and that a career of theft may begin in the individual with a dishonest thought, teach a man to be honest and he will no longer be a thief; that is obvious. But how does this apply to disease? We do not find that the people who suffer from a particular disease are those who have thought the most about it. A little child, for instance, does not think about sickness until it is sick. How do you explain this?

It can only be answered that every individual uninstructed as to the true nature of his divine origin, believes that he is separated from God; or, in other words, he believes that he is not the expressed image of God, but is a mortal with a wholly mortal origin, a thinking entity separate from God, and a material history. Such a supposition precipitates him headlong into a make-believe world, where the phantasmagoria of the carnal mind, the manifestation of evil, is believed to be the real mentality instead of a counterfeit, and wherein whatever comes to him of good is also deemed to belong to a material universe and designated as a part of it.

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