Intelligence is generally considered a private possession, sometimes inherited, sometimes cultivated through education and use, but always dependent upon the brain for normality. Intelligence has been described by mankind as the mental function of comprehending connections, as the cognition that accumulates knowledge, and as the ability to use proper means for accomplishing objectives. The word implies mental acuteness, the ability to reason, and the capacity to grasp facts and judge values.

Christian Science lifts the meaning of intelligence to great heights. It rejects the assumption that intelligence is a private possession or that it is dependent upon brain and declares it to be an attribute of God, apart from matter, which man, God's incorporeal image, reflects. According to Science, intelligence is not broken into bits but is indivisible and infinite. Its possibilities are available to everyone through the demonstration of the truth that man is God's likeness.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy gives this definition as part of her scientific answer to the question, "What is intelligence," (p. 469): "It is the primal and eternal quality of infinite Mind, of the triune Principle,— Life, Truth, and Love,—named God."

As a quality of God, intelligence must include the characteristics of God; it must express existence, truthfulness, wisdom, and love, as well as innumerable other desirable elements that denote a divine source. And it is through the real, spiritual selfhood of each of us that God individualizes intelligence, finds expression for it.

Humanity must learn that without the elements of love and truth no thought or action is truly intelligent. Acuteness without kindness, capability without integrity, and retentiveness without judgment indicate the argument of evil, or the carnal mind, that the divine quality of intelligence can lie robbed of vital elements that belong to it; that it can even appear to be godless.

When love and truthfulness are demonstrated as inseparable from capacity, judgment, and the ability to reason intelligently, they provide one with power over nonintelligent material circumstances. Through the demonstration of the one intelligence, the sinful are freed from attraction to what is low or violent, the sick are healed, the impoverished are released from limitation and dullness.

Christ Jesus reflected the qualities of God in all their perfection, and this gave him unlimited possibilities of intelligence with which to exercise dominion over whatever would reverse God's will for His sons.

The Master never lost sight of his unity with the Father. When he was accused of making himself equal with God, he said (John 5: 19), "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."

This statement can be taken as a rejection of the pantheistic belief that intelligence is in matter or is separate from God. In fact, these words imply that God is the source of all the power, or ability to act, that Jesus manifested. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 23). "The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demonstrated a divine intelligence that subordinates so-called material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves, obey this intelligence."

Here, in a few words, she has explained the possibilities of intelligence when it is used for spiritual purposes—to free mankind from limitation and from various menacing, destructive forces. No doubt mankind will demonstrate the divine power of intelligence more and more freely as they learn to put their best efforts to use in healing and harmonizing the world rather than in the mere accumulation of material facts and knowledge.

No one should be satisfied with his present expression of intelligence. There is no place for conceit or self-congratulation on the subject when it is seen that the human mind only dimly perceives and meagerly expresses this primal and infinite quality. The test of the measure of the actual intelligence we express comes when we endeavor to prove the power of God over disease or deep-seated sin.

We utilize God-given intelligence when we survey a human situation that cries out for healing, see what the problem is, recognize the specific truths that are needed, and then declare the presence of those truths and deny the material sense impressions that are hiding them. God's allness and man's reflection of Spirit's attributes, as well as the impossibility of anything interfering with the divine order, must be understood. This is the true way of comprehending connections, and it is the proper means of accomplishing a scientific objective—the unveiling of what is eternally present.

Intelligence is, of course, essential in the processes of education. Its wonderful possibilities will be apprehended and proved in increasing measure as it is recognized as a universal, indivisible quality reflected by God's sons rather than as a human characteristic which originates in each brain.

Infinite Mind is infinitely intelligent. In fact, divine Mind is intelligence itself. Mrs. Eddy gives us this definition in Science and Health (p. 588): "Intelligence. Substance; self-existent and eternal Mind; that which is never unconscious nor limited."

The truest education is that which aims for God-derived intelligence as the highest goal attainable and which seeks to demonstrate it as the substance that has no limits and is fundamental in the solving of every problem under the sun.

Regardless of the nature of a human difficulty, regardless of its scope, regardless of its seeming hopelessness, that difficulty can be straightened out and healed when the divine quality of intelligence is applied to it. Early in the Scriptures God asks (Gen. 18:14), "Is any thing too hard for the Lord?" Christian Science answers, "Nothing is too hard for the power of divine intelligence, and this quality is available to all mankind."

Helen Wood Bauman