Article June 27, 1931 Issue

Spiritual Sense

HELEN G. STERNE

"Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God." So writes Mrs. Eddy on page 209 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." According to Webster's dictionary, "capacity" means "power of receiving and holding ideas, . . . active mental power." In our "active mental power," then, we are "receiving and holding" either good or evil. We must decide for ourselves which we would have, and build accordingly.

Our education has for so long been along the lines of material thinking that if we are not constantly on guard we may find ourselves thinking materially instead of spiritually. How are we to learn to reverse this condition? How are we to shake ourselves—our thinking—free from this erroneous mode of thought and turn to the right one—to the one which brings us into the realization of what we really are, of the fullness of our being, of our true manhood in Christ? We are told, as Christian Scientists, how to attain this spiritual sense and to be conscious of it now. To be constant in right thinking is the way. Right thinking for one day or half a day is not enough; we must be active all the time. This is our duty, yea, our privilege. If we have fallen short of demonstrating this "conscious, constant capacity," let us begin again with a new incentive to work. How shall we go about this new resolve?

We hear with our spiritual sense, see with our spiritual sense, and know with our spiritual sense. Enoch "walked with God" because of this developed sense. Had he depended on the material senses, he never could have perceived the better way; he never could have proved his life to be eternal. If we seek this sense and cultivate a desire to use it and nothing else, we are on the road to success. But what argues so-called mortal mind? It says, My pain is real because I feel it. But spiritual sense knows nothing of pain. Pain has no power, no presence, no reality. It simply is not. The real man knows no pain, since God does not know it. Man knows only what God knows.

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