Editorial May 6, 1961 Issue

What Men Count Dear

Helen Wood Bauman

History follows the course of what men count dear. Their sense of values from the brutally materialistic to the purely Christlike has determined what has happened in the world. Often there have been dominant individuals and groups whose ideals were fraught with justice, mercy, and freedom. There have been others who sought material advantage at the cost of progress Spiritward.

In human reckoning, people's ideals and their concept of God coincide. Mary Baker Eddy says in "The People's Idea of God" (pp. 6, 7), "Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest or their lowest ideals, by their God and their devil."

Today the distinction between materialistic ideals and spiritual ones is becoming sharper. The reason for this is that the Science of God and man, Christian Science, has revealed the idealism of absolute spiritual being, in which perfect God and perfect man are understood to be the only reality. So dear do scientific Christians count this idealism that they let it dominate every aim and activity of their lives. They freely abandon material standards of success, material methods of healing, material dependencies, all that would prevent their proving that God is their All.

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