Article July 12, 1924 Issue

Where and How Are We Thinking?

ALGERNON HERVEY BATHURST

Our beloved Leader gives, on the first page of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the remarkably clear reminder, "The time for thinkers has come." How important, then, is thinking! Is not everything we do the outcome of some thought, perhaps the outcome of some greater or lesser amount of careful deliberation? Not everybody, however, has been taught or trained to think; and one of the first revelations which come to the student of Christian Science is the great importance of right thinking. But the mere recognition of the importance of right thinking is not sufficient. It must be practiced always. Christian Scientists admit, and doubtless affirm daily, that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all" (Science and Health, p. 468). There is but one Mind, because there is but one God; and that Mind is not in one locality only, for it is infinite. Since there is one infinite Mind, and man is the idea or reflection of God, Mind, man cannot have a mind apart from God, divine Mind. For this reason, as Christian Scientists begin to recognize the true nature of Mind,—namely, that it is God, good, and infinite,—they endeavor to give up admitting or harboring evil thoughts or suggestions. They also desire to cease thinking merely in terms of localities or locally.

A Christian Scientist was once discussing the narrow or parochial outlook of many people with a well-known American writer traveling in Europe. This American citizen traveled a great deal; and when asked if he had found that perhaps the majority of people did not take sufficient interest in world affairs, and so did not think far beyond the frontier of their own country or its coast line, he replied: "Coast line, my dear sir! Many do not think outside their own parish." Christian Scientists cannot afford to be parochial in their thinking; they have enlisted to destroy disease, sin, and death, but not in one locality only: they have enlisted to destroy the universal belief in evil, or the general belief in evil in the various forms it claims to assume, or under which it claims to operate.

No Christian Science practitioner doubts the fact that Christian Science treatment is not limited by time or space. Patients in the Eastern Hemisphere can be healed quickly and thoroughly by treatment given by a Christian Science practitioner in the Western Hemisphere, just as successfully as if the patient and the Christian Scientist were in the same room. Why? Because the Christian Scientist knows that the belief in sin, suffering, disaster, and death is all that has to be destroyed. He knows that that belief is not local. He knows that, in reality, "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation," and that, consequently, divine Mind and its manifestation is the only real presence and is as present in one country as in another, in spite of any argument or belief to the contrary of the so-called carnal or mortal mind.

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