Article March 10, 1951 Issue

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST'S BUSINESS IS GOOD

NEIL MARTIN

"Belief in a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind as the cause of every effect," Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 268 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

Here is a statement which awakened a Christian Scientist out of a sense of bad business and the seeming evidence of it in insecurity and indecision. "Since God, Mind, is perfect cause," he asked himself, "how can Mind's creation—man and the universe—be anything but unerringly mental? What is it that would obscure this fact?" Is it not the mesmeric presence of a horde of false beliefs, based on the testimony of the unreliable senses, which Mrs. Eddy has called mortal mind? Surely what mortal mind is purportedly thinking cannot touch the true individual consciousness, which is aware of its source in and identity with the one universal and perfect divine Mind. No matter how numerous seem the beliefs which constitute mortal mind, the individual who consciously and consistently acknowledges his inseparable relationship with divine Mind as the cause of his existence is never eclipsed, and his activity can never slacken.

A Christian Scientist knows that if he assumes he can be deprived even temporarily of his proper sense of supply, he is making deductions from a material basis. He is entertaining a belief in the reality of matter and many minds. He is attempting to rationalize from that unsound basis, too, if he assumes he can be a victim of injustice. The faithful Christian Scientist knows that human law is effective and enduring only so long as it patterns the divine. While completely obedient to the law of the land, he knows that apparent injustices will be corrected in his experience in proportion to his certainty that God governs. He knows that obedience to God's law brings him into consonance with all the law he can be required to obey, even in human relationships. He is in accord with Paul, who declared (Rom. 7:22), "I delight in the law of God after the inward man."

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