Editorial December 15, 1928 Issue

Spirituality

Duncan Sinclair

Few statements are more significant than that of Paul to the Romans, "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." The apostle's words state without the least trace of ambiguity the fact that materiality and death are indissociable, and that spirituality, or spiritual-mindedness, is synonymous with life and peace. And in making this profound metaphysical statement Paul was but reiterating what Christ Jesus had taught and demonstrated; for throughout his entire ministry the Master had striven to raise the thoughts of men above materiality, above material beliefs and practices, into the atmosphere of spiritual truth, and had on numerous occasions proved to them the power of spirituality in the healing of all manner of disease and sin.

It might be said that the aim of Christian Science is to spiritualize thought. It finds men at all stages of spirituality—or lack of spirituality. Some are grossly material—selfish, passionate, sensuous, liable to hate and fear. Others are less so: they have glimpsed the spiritual and are striving to overcome, through the exercise of the moral qualities, the sensuous and sinful. Others still have reached a much more advanced spiritual understanding, and are proving that it is possible for men to attain to a decided mastery over the animal propensities, to live a highly moral life, and to aid their fellow-men by adding to the spirituality of the latter and healing them physically when necessary.

Like begets like. Material thought tends to suggest material thought with its degrading effects. Thought that is spiritualized influences directly and beneficially whomsoever it rests upon, even to the extent of healing inveterate disease and sin. Referring to the spirituality of Jesus and its power to bless, Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 51), "His spirituality separated him from sensuousness, and caused the selfish materialist to hate him; but it was this spirituality which enabled Jesus to heal the sick, cast out evil, and raise the dead."

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Notes from the Publishing House New Bible