Editorial September 10, 1955 Issue

FUNCTIONS AND STIMULUS

Robert Ellis Key

Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 151): "Every function of the real man is governed by the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to kill or to cure, and it has no control over God's man." The harmonious action of all things is under the control of Mind. Mortal mind, so called, is not power, and therefore cannot control the functions of man.

The functions of man are spiritual; their creator and maintainer is Spirit, God. They do not exist in the so-called substance of matter, but in the substance of Spirit. As spiritual substance they function as intelligence, for substance and intelligence are synonymous in Christian Science. Because we, as children of God, function as intelligent ideas, we therefore express law, order, and co-ordination through Mind, not through matter.

We need no stimulus except Mind, which is the natural stimulus of the body. A drug, alcohol, or tobacco acts through the material senses. It perpetuates the belief that man lives in matter and can thus be energized or calmed through matter. Such, however, is not the case. Man lives in Mind, and Mind, as it is demonstrated, is our natural stimulus. Mind sustains and invigorates by the divine energies of Spirit.

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