Article February 25, 1950 Issue

CONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE AND HABIT

MILDRED E. HYDE

Mortals believe that life, intelligence, sensation, and action are controlled by matter and that one acts voluntarily or involuntarily through human will or nerve. Furthermore, they believe that one's inherent nature, or identity, is made up of contrary characteristics. Christian Science teaches that life, intelligence, sensation, and action are not in matter. It teaches that the real man is spiritual, whose life and being are the expression of Life, God. It has for its authority the Bible. For instance, the Psalmist explained man as the son of God, simply and beautifully, when he sang (8:4—6): "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? ... Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."

Mary Baker Eddy makes this luminous statement in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 302): "The Science of being reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is perfect, because the Soul, or Mind, of the spiritual man is God, the divine Principle of all being, and because this real man is governed by Soul instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called laws of matter." Then this fact is evident: man is perfect because God is perfect, and the real man, being "governed by Soul instead of sense," is consciously intelligent and does not do things from force of habit or in an automatic or routine manner. Any assumption to the contrary is an untruth regarding man, his sovereignty and dominion.

The word habit implies unchanging custom, common practice, one's old way; in other words, the same old story, nothing new or fresh. The Apostle Paul's instruction is to put off the old man and "be renewed in the spirit of [one's] mind" by putting on the new man, who "is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. 4:23, 24). To renew means to refresh, restore.

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