Editorial September 18, 1943 Issue

"The altitude of mind"

Paul Stark Seeley

Mankind , for the most part, believes that evil has power. How evil can have any power, and yet God be all-powerful, no one can explain. Yet, explained or unexplained, men believe ignorant evil often has more power than intelligent good. They find themselves confronted with evil forces producing sickness, crime, sin, discord, and death. Little wonder they believe evil has power.

Christian Science offers the only intelligible and provable explanation of the omnipotence of good and the powerlessness of evil. It explains all things from a mental basis. Mind is God. This Mind is intelligent, loving, just, and good. Power is native to intelligence, is inherent in Mind. Thought imbued with intelligence, thought imaging Mind, finds itself clothed with power to live, to understand, to accomplish. But if one accepts ignorant, evil, material thoughts as his mind and consciousness, by that act he gives evil power. It is only when one accepts evil as mind, and as his mind, that it seems to have power. Whatever is mind to one is, in belief, power to one. Poignantly Mary Baker Eddy states this truth: "It is plain that elevating evil to the altitude of mind gives it power, and that the belief in more than one spirit, if Spirit, God, is infinite, breaketh the First Commandment in the Decalogue" (Christian Science versus Pantheism, pp. 6, 7).

Every time a negative evil thought appears at the door of consciousness, the individual takes it in or shuts it out. If he takes it in, he says in effect: "This is my thought. It goes to make up my consciousness. I'm not very proud of its lineage, but it's here, and it must be my mind, so I consent to be motivated by it." Who gives it power? Why, the one who believes it is his thinking, a conscious force within him. He elevates it to the altitude of mind, claims and admits it as his thinking, his controller. Elevating thoughts of sin, fear, hate, sickness, self-will to the altitude of mind endows them with power.

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