Paul wrote to the Philippians (2:5), "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." And to the Corinthians he wrote (I Cor. 2:16), "We have the mind of Christ."

What does it mean to have the Mind of Christ? It means to understand God as man's only Mind and thus to be Christly, or spiritually-minded. It means not only to have intelligence but to have understanding, wisdom, intuition, and clarity.

When we lift our thought to express the Christ-spirit, we find that there are no problems in our affairs that cannot be solved. Man is endowed with true consciousness, and true consciousness can be expressed in the way that Christ Jesus taught us to express it. A clear realization of this way enables the individual to correct the fears of physical disorders, emotional situations, financial needs, and brings to light new opportunities.

One day during a conversation with a friend the writer was asked, "How did you happen to become a Christian Science practitioner?"

"Well, you see it did not just happen," was the writer's reply. "It was the natural result of many years' study of the Bible, and then the application of the teachings of Christian Science. It was the effect of earnest endeavor in daily experience to overcome the carnal mind, with its thoughts of fear; and it was the desire to love God, good, supremely and to express loving, tender compassion for my fellowmen, as the Master did. A grateful joy came as I realized that unselfed love, shared with my fellowmen when invited, could, without an element of doubt, answer their prayerful desire whatever its name or nature."

We do not read anywhere in the four Gospels that Jesus taught his disciples that adversity is real. Instead, he reversed the evidence of sorrow and sickness as contrary to the Father's will and presented his followers with an example of man's God-derived power.

"Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations," wrote James (1:2). These temptations are opportunities for us to try our faith, test our willingness to let the Christ rule our thoughts, and exercise Christly love and dominion in our affections. They show our need to deny the claims of a personal will and to let the divine Mind govern all the affairs of our lives.

Christ Jesus refused to weigh the claims of matter in the scale with God's uninvadable and unchallengeable sovereignty. He accepted as real only the universality and intactness of Love's kingdom.

When the Mind of Christ is utilized in all our affairs, the Christly light of Truth reaches the smallest event of daily living with harmonious adjustment.

In "Pulpit and Press" (p. 3), Mrs. Eddy assures us of our ability to express the Mind of Christ in these words: "Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love. If you maintain this position, who or what can cause you to sin or suffer?"

If we find ourselves longing for more wisdom, if we wish that we could make right decisions more easily, or if we think that we do not have the ability to do and be all that we aspire to, let us remind ourselves that we are "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17)—that we have the Mind of Christ.

Many people search for ways to be calm. They depend on tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and so on, but anyone who lets the divine Mind be his only Mind finds an inner peace and tranquillity that are permanent. The peace we find as we realize that we have the Mind of Christ and as we live and act from this standpoint is a peace that is alive and vibrant; it is not a lulling of our sensibilities and powers, but it is the peace that comes from depending on Spirit, God. It is a peace that is powerful, a peace from which spring productive thought and action.

It was Mrs. Eddy who brought to this age both a right concept of God and the enormous importance of entertaining that concept in consciousness. She made clear that one's concept of God is the central fact of one's existence. Through revelation her spiritual vision discerned the exact nature of good, its reality and its exclusive presence. And that vision embraced the fact that God must be understood as the infinite source of good. She saw accordingly that the need of mankind is to think good thoughts because good thoughts are manifest in a good experience.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 274): "The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never formed. Science and understanding, governed by the unerring and eternal Mind, destroy the imaginary copartnership, matter and mind, formed only to be destroyed in a manner and at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional partnership is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears."

Christian Science proclaims that if God is recognized as divine Mind and the only Mind of man, the concepts of divine Mind are then seen to be the concepts by reflection of individual man. To the individual who accepts this and applies it, these concepts are manifest in his experience as health, holiness, and the ability to use his God-given talents. He has also the power to destroy the illusion that he has a mind which is aware of any other concept.

As the individual understands God, as he expresses the qualities of Mind, he will gain high ideals. These ideals will be definite, unchanging, permanent, and clear. They will be achieved progressively through the desire of the individual to achieve them.

Mrs. Eddy says in "The People's Idea of God" (pp. 6, 7), "Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest or their lowest ideals, by their God and their devil." Then, after pointing out that each individual is a sculptor working out his own ideals, she refers her followers to this rule by which experience is sculptured: "Recognizing this as we ought, we shall turn often from marble to model, from matter to Mind, to beautify and exalt our lives."

Let us daily accept the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," which has unchallengeable sovereignty over any opposing power, whatever its name or nature.