Editorial March 25, 1950 Issue

TRUE DISCRIMINATION

Helen Wood Bauman

Discrimination often implies an injurious or unfair distinction in the treatment of others. But the term is akin to discernment and may also mean the act of distinguishing accurately and with penetration. In the latter sense the ability to discriminate is desirable, is a faculty which intelligence alone bestows. In the practice of Christian Science it is indispensable to spiritual progress and to success in healing. Mary Baker Eddy once said in counseling her followers (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 302), "My students are expected to know the teaching of Christian Science sufficiently to discriminate between error and Truth, thus sparing their teacher a task and themselves the temptation to be misled."

Christian Science teaches true discrimination. It reveals the universe which God evolves—not a universe made up of material objects separated by time and space, but the realm of divine Mind, which is replete with living ideas, conscious identities that exhibit the goodness and perfection of Mind, God. Spiritual sense discerns these ideas, for it comprehends the substance of reality, the joy, peace, purity, and strength which characterize all that is divine. And only the consciousness that is illumined by the evidence of the real creation can detect the murky atmosphere of mortal thought, which is dispelled by the power of Truth. This is true discrimination.

A woman who had suffered physically for twelve years pressed through the throng that followed the Master, touched the border of his garment, and was immediately healed. Mrs. Eddy mentions this incident in "Unity of Good" where she writes (p. 57): "When Jesus turned and said, 'Who hath touched me?' he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it is written that he felt that 'virtue had gone out of him.' His pure consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed."

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