Article October 12, 1981 Issue

Clothed with true thoughts

NAOMI RUTH WHEELER

Through the centuries, humanity has lavished attention on fashions in clothes—so hinting at prevailing attitudes and mores. But Christ Jesus was concerned completely with how men clothe thought. He said, "Take no thought...for your body, what ye shall put on."^{Matt. 6:25.} Mrs. Eddy liked to see her followers well dressed, but she, too, labored exclusively to help people outfit consciousness with the spiritual facts of being. She writes: "Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things. For Spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power."^{Retrospection and Introspection, p. 28.}

Mrs. Eddy also advises Christian Scientists about things they shouldn't be wearing. Take "lavender-kid zeal"! Do you recall Mrs. Eddy's earnest plea: "Will you doff your lavender-kid zeal, and become real and consecrated warriors?"^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 177.}

Serious Christian Scientists meticulously tailor their thinking. They avoid time-wasting frills and the superficiality of the letter without the spirit. In the working denim of divine metaphysics they find joyful, quiet labor in purifying thought, putting off vanity, selfishness, and indifference to the needs of others. They are willing, in fact desirous, to grow beyond the temporal silks and satins of materiality, beyond wanting to be made comfortable in matter by Science. Serious Christian Scientists strive for more spiritual maturity and broader, more powerful demonstration of the truth of their Christly identities. Mrs. Eddy puts it this way: "As mortals drop off their mental swaddling-clothes, thought expands into expression."^{Science and Health, p. 255.}

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