Article March 21, 1936 Issue

Right Mental Pictures

LEONARD T. CARNEY

The human mind pictures to itself what it believes. Our work as Christian Scientists is to replace the mental pictures of mortality, lack, sin, and disease with the ideas of divine Mind, God, which are good, desirable, and altogether lovely. Mary Baker Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 264), "The crude creations of mortal thought must finally give place to the glorious forms which we sometimes behold in the camera of divine Mind, when the mental picture is spiritual and eternal."

Christian Science teaches that nothing really exists but God and His ideas. The meaning of the word "idea" as used in this Science is of great importance. Mrs. Eddy quotes a definition of "idea" by Webster, on page 115 of Science and Health, as follows: "Idea: An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding." Various other words such as reflection, expression, thought, spiritual fact, manifestation, are and may be used interchangeably, yet the word "idea" is a word especially outstanding, and the use of it understandingly, illumines the facts of divine Mind. Idea, in Christian Science, does not mean any vague conception, supposition, fancy, plan, suggestion, or notion. Idea is the mental concept which expresses God, and reveals the limitless nature of divine Mind. Idea is the thought of God, invisible, perfect, eternal. God's thoughts are multitudinous, embracing the right or true concept of everything. These spiritual concepts are God's ideas. Man is the highest of God's ideas. The other ideas range from the least to the greatest.

God is the Principle of the universe, the foundation, cause, origin, source of all that really is. To know Him aright is to demonstrate divine Science. We know Him through the ideas and attributes which express Him. To fix thought upon God as Life, Truth, Love—upon the qualities which represent Him and upon the spiritual ideas which reveal Him as limitless, universal, inexhaustible Mind—enables us to prove the healing power of Christian Science. Some of the attributes of God are wisdom, intelligence, omnipotence, all-presence, love, substantiality, eternality. The ideas which express Him, and which are reflected by man, are identity, law, government, and innumerable others inseparable from Mind, individual in nature. All spiritual ideas express God, good, as their source or cause.

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