Article February 3, 1945 Issue

Importance of Right Thinking

LLOYD B. COATE

An interesting article by David O. Woodbury on the telescope then being built on Palomar Mountain in California was published in The Saturday Evening Post (June 17, 1939). The mirror of the telescope is seventeen feet in diameter and weighs nearly twenty tons. The disk of glass has been smoothed, polished, and tested to contours exact within two millionths of an inch. Many technicians of prominence in Europe and America have had a hand in the design. Great was the demand made by the astronomers on the engineers to work out proper support for the hundreds of tons of mechanism high in the air, so that it could be moved into any position without distortion. Seven years of preparation went into the problem. "The earth is the most accurate clock known," said Mr. Woodbury, "and a telescope situated upon it must unwind the earth's rotation exactly if it is to remain on a star.... The impossible is no longer in astronomy; it is only that which the scientist has not yet had time to do."

If accurate thinking and workmanship are essential on the part of inventors and engineers in building an ocean liner, an airplane, an automobile, a telescope, and other useful inventions, should not mankind likewise learn to think accurately regarding health, which is important to all mankind? For centuries time and thought have been given to the overcoming of sickness by the use of material remedies, but after these have failed many people have found health by learning what Christian Science teaches on the subject. "Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind," says Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 120); and she concludes, "Therefore the divine Principle of Science, reversing the testimony of the physical senses, reveals man as harmoniously existent in Truth, which is the only basis of health."

Some physicians acknowledge that patients need more than hospitalization, more than surgery; they need the peace of mind which comes with the Christ-life. The Psalmist understood the real basis of health to be spiritual and not material: hence he wrote (Ps. 42:11): "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"An understanding heart"