Editorial December 6, 1941 Issue

"An impervious armor'

Alfred Pittman

It has been widely recognized that throughout his great Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus was emphasizing the primary importance of thought in human experience. He pointed out that the need of mankind was not only to avoid killing but to avoid hate, not only to give alms but to have love in one's heart, not merely to pray outwardly, but truly to commune with God; and he urged in other ways the same essential fact. On another occasion, he sternly rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for paying "tithe of mint and anise and cummin," and omitting "the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith," all of them primarily mental.

Christians in general have seen, and profited by seeing, that in all this and much else that the Master said the emphasis was on right thinking. But they have largely missed the significance of the fact that the one who so forcefully taught these things was the most skillful healer of the sick that the world has known, and also manifested a control over his own material body, as it seemed to be, which no one else has equaled. Yet in his healing work itself, the Master continually stressed the importance of factors wholly mental. "Thy faith hath made thee whole," he said to more than one whom he had healed. "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee," he said to another—after showing clearly on many occasions that sin is basically mental.

Mary Baker Eddy, the beloved Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in her scientifically spiritual interpretation of Jesus' teachings makes altogether plain the relation of thought to the condition of the body. She writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 404), "A corrupt mind is manifested in a corrupt body," adding these words: "Hatred, envy, dishonesty, fear, and so forth, make a man sick, and neither material medicine nor Mind can help him permanently, even in body, unless it makes him better mentally, and so delivers him from his destroyers." And elsewhere she writes (ibid., p. 248), "Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love—the kingdom of heaven—reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear."

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