Article July 16, 1984 Issue

Thought must change

DONALD HALE WALLINGFORD

One morning I was praying very earnestly and humbly in an effort to deal with a physical problem that had been painfully bothering me for some time. Among other helpful things, I came upon this familiar statement Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes in the Christian Science textbook: "A sick body is evolved from sick thoughts."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 260.}

After I had been pondering the simplicity and obvious meaning of this statement for a while, the thought came, "How impossible it is for one to experience healing in Christian Science unless his thinking changes, unless sickly thinking is replaced by Godlike thinking." I knew that it isn't the thinking alone that heals, but something has to change in thought, rather than in body, before the healing can take place. Speaking with those who had begun to believe in his teachings, Christ Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."^{John 8:32.} True, it is the truth that frees one, but the truth must be known by anyone seeking healing. Indeed, this is the requirement laid down by the Master in his statement.

I then reasoned that I could not possibly come out on the other side of a trying experience with the same kind of thinking that brought me into the experience in the first place. The thinking would have to change, the truth would have to be known, before the body or the circumstances could change in what I would recognize as the healing. As I searched further, I found this reassuring statement in the textbook: "The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs."^{Science and Health, pp. 124-125.}

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