Editorial August 20, 1949 Issue

THE PERCEPTIVE FACULTY

George Channing

Cultivation of the perceptive faculty is a primary requirement for one who would demonstrate Christian Science effectively. One's ability to appraise correctly everything of which he is conscious should be brought out more and more incisively. By such ability one knows that this or that state of thought is righteous and real, and that an opposite so-called state of thought is unrighteous and illusory. By it he recognizes the good thought whose manifestation he sees, and by it the evil thought whose manifestation human sense claims to see. Thus he is enabled to employ specific truth to nullify specific error.

The foregoing is a large requirement to material sense, indeed an impossible one; but to spiritual sense it presents neither difficulty nor mystery. For the perceptive faculty is closely allied to spiritual sense, according to Mary Baker Eddy, the great Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and the forever Leader of its adherents. In her sermon entitled "Christian Healing" she writes (p. 14), "You must first mentally educate and develop the spiritual sense or perceptive faculty by which one learns the metaphysical treatment of disease."

The perceptive faculty to which Mrs. Eddy thus refers is infinitely more penetrating than intellectual analysis. It supplements human reason and is therefore not limited to it. It is that spiritual capacity to be conscious of God and of spiritual reality which none but the pure in heart can know.

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Editorial
THE TEST OF LOVE
August 20, 1949
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