Article December 28, 1935 Issue

Rumor

ELIZABETH YATES MC GREAL

The word "rumor" has several meanings, but as we use it today its most common meaning is, according to Webster, "a story or report current without any known authority for its truth."

Idle talk about individuals originates in the so-called human mind. If some undesirable report reaches our ears about a friend, a well-known worker in the movement, or even the slightest of acquaintances, it is a wise plan to test it by tracing its origin. From whence did it come? Mind's messages are known by their strength, by their purity, and by the great fact that blessing one they bless all. Correspondingly, the integrity of individual thinking should be such that those reports which bear not the stamp of Mind are recognized and destroyed. Question a vague rumor and you will find that it has no source. "They say so ... Someone told me ..." will be the diverting answers proving the rumor's baseless and subtly deceptive formation from the elements of mortal mind. Baseless rumors receive no credence, and have no place in the thought of Christian Scientists who live and speak the truth.

All that concerns another's good—progress, activity, happiness—may safely pass from lip to lip as a tiding of great joy. But that which carries a shade of doubt, a tinge of curiosity, the wraith of malice, must meet the demand: "Are you from God? Do you bear news of good? Listening to you, will I harm no one? Publishing, will I bless all? ... No! Then you have no entry here." The vigilant mental householder excludes rumor from his thought and conversation. A true Christian Scientist will not knowingly speak for mortal mind; neither will he knowingly relay idle rumors, for by so doing he might be spreading something unfounded and spurious. There is need for protective work along these lines—work by which we may know the validity of the words we pass on to each other, and by which we may know our complete exclusion from rumor's attempted inclusion. As individual ideas of the one immortal Mind we can assert our dominion over the lies of mortal mind.

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