Article August 28, 1926 Issue

What Are We Thinking?

EDITH BAILEY

We sometimes hear the thought voiced that Christian Science merely teaches one to think he is not sick and that then he will not be; to think that a desirable position belongs rightfully to him, and it will be attained; to think one has money and he will then have it; and so on. Now, Christian Science is very far removed from this human way of thinking, as our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, explains in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 297), where she says, "Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine." Thus Christian Science includes the understanding of the actual or real. It enables us to prove that because we are "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" we have as our present heritage peace, joy, health, holiness, abundance of good. It is therefore our privilege and duty to close the door to any suggestion of sickness, lack, inharmony, inactivity, and the myraid mortal mind suggestions that would attempt to keep us under bondage. We should, instead, hold in consciousness the truth that man has dominion over every erroneous condition.

Not only should we guard the door against suggestions from within but we should guard it against all suggestions of envy, malice, resentment, or hatred which may be directed toward us from without. These must, then and there, be destroyed through knowing the nothingness of suggestion in the light of the allness of God and of man's relationship to Him. Our beloved Leader, in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 210), provides us a defence against all attacks from the enemy, within or without, when she lovingly admonishes us in these words: "Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them;" and she goes on to say: "There is no door through which evil can enter, and no space for evil to fill in a mind filled with goodness. Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort." Shall we not, then, exercise our God-given do-minion and gratefully prove our protection?

As long as we have a sense of material existence, we need not be surprised by the constant attempt of the enemy to gain admission into consciousness; but we should be unafraid. And we are, when thoughts of good have closed the door. A rather homely illustration came to the writer one morning. The flames from the gas logs were sweeping over the asbestos in the fireplace. Every day all through the winter, after the gas was lighted, this had continued; but the asbestos was not burned, because it contained nothing that responded to the flames. Error may be all about us, seeming to come very near us, but it need not, cannot, touch us, if there is within consciousness nothing that responds to it.

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