Article July 1, 1933 Issue

The Kingdom That Comes in Right Thinking

LOUIS A. GREGORY

THE New Testament tells us of the Mind that was in Christ Jesus, and shows us that to this consciousness the kingdom of God is spiritual, ever present perfection, the sole reality. The carnal mind, also, is there exposed, with its belief in a kingdom of matter and evil, supposedly as real as the spiritual kingdom. Jesus described "the devil," evil, and its errors as "a liar, and the father of it." He said, again, "The kingdom of God is within you;" and he exposed the supposititious kingdom of evil as having no power, no presence. Thus one is seen as fact and the other as falsity.

Human thinking commonly professes that the kingdom of matter is the present reality and the kingdom of Spirit is of the future. Such profession belongs to "this world" of sin, sickness, sorrow, and death. By such belief righteousness, wholeness, harmony are supposedly relegated to the remote "hereafter." Jesus found wrong thinking of this kind, and corrected it by proving God's kingdom to be at hand. By healing all kinds of disease, overcoming lack and limitation, mastering sin and death, he demonstrated the immediate and tangible expression of spiritual power. He denounced methods that ignored wrong mental conditions and dealt primarily with physical situations and environment. This process he likened to cleaning the outside of the vessel, while within all was corrupt. Applying this teaching further, he affirmed that it is not what goes into the body that defiles, but what comes "out of the heart." To evil thoughts he attributed lust, murder, theft, lying—all manner of evil. Again, he proved the power of right thinking over all sorts of error, and showed it to be available for every follower of Truth.

In mathematics we find that right thinking regarding numerical facts is valuable and powerful, but wrong thinking is error, wholly negative. If, instead of working according to rule, the student of numbers follows a whim, or tries to sustain some wrong preconception, he will fail to reach a correct solution, no matter how hard he may strive. In the same way, even though his motives be right, the seeker for Truth who mistakes human desire for spiritually right thinking will miss the mark. Christian Science teaches that thinking must not merely approximate a human sense of what constitutes goodness, but must conform to the one demonstrable standard of rightness, to divine Principle. It teaches us to ally ourselves with Mind and reject the theory that there is any other intelligence. An important step in this alliance is improved thinking, replacing belief in evil with adherence to good; anticipation of sickness with realization of health; acceptance of sin with persistence in rightness; fear of disaster with confidence in harmony; dread of old age, poverty, loss, change, with assurance of God's everlasting providence. Christian Science practice is proving that increasingly better thinking leads to better doing and improved experience.

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