Editorial March 29, 1982 Issue

The Science of Spirit—a healing psychology

BEULAH M. ROEGGE

Looking to Soul, Spirit—in other words, to God—for the understanding of consciousness, mind and ego, we find a source for constructive, harmonious behavior. A knowledge of God, underlying thought and action, ensures a healthy psyche—mental and emotional health. Attitudes and behavior based on a progressive understanding of infinite Love and goodness are wholesome. They are a preventive of sin and disease in the individual. And such spiritualized thinking and living promote a society that inspires and supports constructive behavior in its members.

We naturally want to control our own behavior and to find others' behavior controlled by good. It is equally natural to want to understand why we do things the way we do, and why we may have certain feelings. But a study of human behavior alone is always after the fact, and when made from a material standpoint, does not have real healing content. "The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science," writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "as would be readily seen, if psychology, or the Science of Spirit, God, was understood."^{ Science and Health, p. 369.}

The word "psychology" was coined in the sixteenth century. Psychology, in its early stages, was considered the study of the soul; as it developed, it has become the study of consciousness and behavior. But psychology considered as "the Science of Spirit, God," begins with the study of God in an effort to understand and correct human consciousness and behavior.

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