Article June 6, 1959 Issue

PROTECTING OUR THOUGHTS

DONALD PEARCE

Mary Baker Eddy has instructed her followers to do daily metaphysical work for their own protection. A student of Christian Science may perhaps find himself questioning: What am I to protect and how is this protective work to be done? Should I work to protect my material body?

Of course the body requires protection in this stage of existence, yet to approach the problem from the standpoint that man is physical is to invite failure. To admit the existence of a body which is liable to accident, disease, and death when in reality man is the image and likeness of God, Spirit, is not in accord with the teachings of Christian Science. And it is not consistent with Science to admit first that we have a sick or an injured body and then to endeavor to heal it metaphysically. Neither a discordant nor a harmonious physical body is God-made.

That which requires healing is not man, God's likeness, but one's mistaken concept of oneself. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 208): "A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness."

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