Editorial November 9, 1963 Issue

Spiritual Ideas

Helen Wood Bauman

The world is engrossed in what it calls ideas, and, generally, the word is applied to any kind of formulated thought or opinion. Humanly speaking, an idea is a mental conception which may be worked out in ways cognized by the physical senses, such as a method of running a business, a clever invention, a new kind of food, an original mode of expression in art or music, a progressive political step.

"Idea" is a useful word. But Christian Scientists need to take care in the way they employ it. For Christian Science unfolds absolute, spiritual ideas. It reveals that God is divine Mind and that His entire creation is made up of His ideas; and these, being spiritual, must be carefully distinguished from human ideas.

In Christian Science, ideas have certain categories. For instance, God's ideas are His formations: living identities, conscious spiritual beings, of which man is the highest. Then, as Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 88), "To love one's neighbor as one's self, is a divine idea." All true concepts are Mind's ideas. The concept of God's allness is a spiritual idea. The truth of man's spiritual perfection is a spiritual idea. The fact of man's inseparability from his source is a spiritual idea. Man, Church, and universe are compound ideas, that is, they are compounded of all spiritual ideas.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

"One step out of error"