Article June 17, 1922 Issue

Thoughts: Their Nature and Effects

WILLIAM G. BIEDERMAN

Spiritual thoughts are intrinsically and solely the product of the one divine Mind, God. They are true, and emanate from no other source than the one and only cause. Their nature, therefore, partakes of the pure and immortally perfect qualities and fundamental virtues of infinite Mind, or divine Principle. Their absolute relation to the one Mind is that of the perfect reflection or likeness to its original. Such thoughts are the true manifestation of divine Love to man in the infinite phases of man's spiritual eternal existence as the perfect child of God; and they are without limit or interruption, beginning or end. Because of this continuous, powerful, ever present spiritual outpouring, man receives and reflects good in every one of the myriad ways in which infinite Mind expresses itself.

Spiritual thoughts are manifested in spiritual man. Man in his perfect, spiritual individuality is the idea of his heavenly Father, from whom he is receiving countless spiritual thoughts with absolute precision, regularity, and continuity. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581), Mrs. Eddy defines angels as, "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality,counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." The popular belief that angels are personalities with wings and human forms, but with divine attributes and powers, tends to swerve mankind into the belief that God's thoughts are sent from a greater or less distance. Christian Science, following the Savior's teaching and example, has corrected this misapprehension by showing that divine Mind is ever present, immanent, always near. Therefore, God's angels, divine thoughts, are always at hand, and more available than the air we breathe.

Christian Science teaches that thoughts are the only things with which we ever have anything to do. We are sometimes lured into the belief that we are dealing with persons and things; but, instead, we are dealing with thoughts of them. The tares and wheat referred to by Jesus are symbolical of good and evil thoughts. Our sowing and reaping is the sowing and reaping of these thoughts. If our thoughts are from divine Mind, we are sowing good; if from error, we are sowing corruption. Real thoughts are continuous, without variableness, constant, unimpaired,—always have existed and always will exist in perfection. Because divine Mind includes all law, spiritual thoughts have the nature and effect of law. As the tendency of laws enacted by a legislature is to establish the reign of order among men, so spiritual thoughts surely establish, in the individual, absolute order in the place of disorder, strength in the place of weakness, and peace in the place of strife and discord. Good thoughts come from God, divine Mind; and, if received and assimilated, naturally result in harmony and salvation to the one entertaining them, as well as to all those coming within the range of everyday experience. Whether those who are witnessing our lives realize it or not, they are being influenced and blessed by our right example and thought.

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