Most people would be likely to associate the word "mode" with the latest fashion, particularly in clothing, where the French expression "à la mode" is extensively used to denote that the creation thus classified is indeed the last word in novelty and modernity of attire. It is, however, remarkable that the modes in the world of fashion alter so quickly that the design which is modish today may soon be thought old-fashioned, both by those who try always to design, and by those who wish to wear, the newest thing in dress.

The fact is that the human so-called mind itself has its "modes"; and they can and often do change as quickly as does the mode in wearing apparel. This is easily realized if one thinks of the changes in modes of locomotion, circulation of news, medical practice, architecture, which have taken place within the memory of many living in the civilized world today. And even in the sphere of religion one may surely say that the modes of human consciousness as it feels after the divine are undoubtedly changing. The more material modes of seeking God are seen to be giving way to the spiritual. The modes of ritual, creed, and dogma are releasing their hold on the thoughts of men; for the modes of God, the divine ways and means, are reaching human thought, changing it from an inactive, deadened sense of religion, and bringing to light the active presence and power of Christ, Truth.

This revolutionary change from the material modes of thought to the divine is quietly yet inevitably going on in human consciousness today, and is being brought about by the teachings of Christian Science through the revelation of divine law, as given in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. This textbook so clearly elucidates the divine modes that humanity can utilize them in every pattern and pathway, for guidance and inspiration.

This change in mental modes results, as Mrs. Eddy implies, from the leaven of Truth typified in Jesus' parable of the leaven which the woman "hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." "Ages pass," she writes on page 118 of Science and Health, "but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man's spiritual freedom." In the ensuing paragraph it is shown that mortal thought with its three major modes, science, theology, and medicine, and the false laws attaching to them, is to be leavened by Spirit, until it is wholly changed, and the spiritual modes of divine thought, including spiritual laws, are seen to be free from the beliefs of material motion and false substance, supposedly created by mortal thought out of dust or nothingness.

It is interesting to find that a dictionary definition of the word "mode" brings out something of these two meanings, namely, the ephemeral human and the unchanging divine ways; for after such definitions as "rule, custom, form, manner of existing," we find "mode" defined as "an attribute or quality of a substance." Remembering that Mrs. Eddy has defined "intelligence" in part as "substance" (Science and Health, p. 588), we can follow a train of thought leading to the conclusion that the only mode of real substance must be the law of divine Mind, the only intelligence there is or ever has been.

A further interesting idea may be gained from the dictionary derivation of the word "mode." It comes from the Latin modus, a measure; and we thus see that "mode" has a wider meaning than we may have supposed; for are not all material things measured, limited, and classified according to the calculations and suppositional laws of mortal sense? The divine measurements are quite different; and, far from being governed by material limitations, they govern everything that really exists.

In the twenty-eighth chapter of Job we read, "He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure." And in Habakkuk is the passage, "He stood, and measured the earth." No one reading such majestic imagery can doubt that these writers discerned something of the divine modes, but it remained for Mrs. Eddy from the peak of scientific understanding to elucidate what the divine measure is, and what it does to the seeming material modes and methods. In a sublime sentence she writes (Science and Health, p. 209): "Material substances or mundane formations, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories, based on the hypothesis of material law or life and intelligence resident in matter, will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit."

We shall be wise if we accept this "infinite calculus of Spirit," and begin to apply our understanding of it in our own living and ways of thinking about life; for, seeing that this divine standard is infinite and exact, it is ultimately going to transform everything for us. It is best to stop measuring everything and everybody by solar years, which are mortal limitations; to stop measuring supply by modes of metals which have nothing to do with the divine substance; and above all to remember that "the infinite calculus of Spirit," divine Love, is the only true measurement. Do we love or do we not? That is the only test as to whether or not our names are written in the book of Life spoken of in Revelation, and that is the only mode by which we can arrive at that measurement of perfection spoken of by St. Paul as "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."