Thinking

William P. McKenzie

Almost everybody finds a sense of arousement upon reading on the first page of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" the author's statement that "the time for thinkers has come." Consequently it is of importance to find out what a thinker is.

Is a wolf, stealthy, slinking, ominous, prowling about a fold, a thinker? Here is cruelty, lust, cunning, malign patience, ferocity; but it is only animalism. Is the shepherd's dog a thinker? Here is strength and fighting force like that of the wolf, and fangs to wound; but there is also courage and fidelity, something of love, not for the sheep, but for the master, and willingness to die for his sake. And the shepherd, is he a thinker? Not if he be only a hireling shepherd who flees before animalism, leaving the sheep unprotected. Jesus indicated that the good shepherd was one who stood ready to give his life for the sheep, and we may say that the true thinker is just that. He is one who is laying down his merely human sense of life; that is, he is divorcing animalism, fear, self-will, love of ease, sin, and sickness from consciousness so as to be able to think God's thoughts after Him, and to enlighten others with the light whereby he himself has been enabled to know and to see.

Such thinking must, of course, have a basis, and we find the basis very clearly indicated by Mrs. Eddy when she says (Science and Health, p. 467), "Reasoning from cause to effect in the Science of Mind, we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea which expresses it and cannot be learned from its opposite, matter." Thinking, then, is spiritual understanding, and its processes rest upon true causation. They "begin with Mind." If true thinking is understanding expressed in word or act, the reverse of this, that is, misunderstanding made active as mesmerism, is only what we might call cerebration. One might ask, for example, if some ordinary utterances of the press evidence thought. Too often there is no causative thinking at all behind the record, which is prepared only for the phonographing of baseless rumor. Shakespeare has put it thus:—

Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude,
Can play upon it.

When personalizing rumor, he puts these words in the actor's mouth:—

Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?

Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

Thinking connects man with God and brings confidence and peace. Rumor brings anxieties and fears, and multiplies them; for, as the poet above quoted says, "Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo, the numbers of the feared." In a chapter entitled "Unchristian Rumor" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 266) Mrs. Eddy says: "The spirit of lies is abroad. Because Truth has spoken aloud, error, running to and fro in the earth, is screaming, to make itself heard above Truth's voice. The audible and inaudible wail of evil never harms Scientists, steadfast in their consciousness of the nothingness of wrong and the supremacy of right."

As an example of the unthinking methods of the press might be cited the way in which news is made of family discords. The endeavor seems to be made to cause human minds to be set on fire of hell with suspicion, contempt, jealousy, fear. Where two who have lived as husband and wife find differences of taste and desire emphasized so as to bring out bitterness or resentment, the remedy is written out in the Christian Science textbook (Science and Health, p. 60), where it says that "physical sense, not discerning the true happiness of being, places it on a false basis. Science will correct the discord, and teach us life's sweeter harmonies. Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul. Higher enjoyments alone can satisfy the cravings of immortal man." The remedy involves real thinking. The temptation leads to the reverse—to jealousy, bitterness, hate, false belief, and malign suggestion. Even when through remission by law of a human obligation there seems to be liberty gained from promises made before God, this of itself is no comfort, because disturbing cerebration will go on until every one who suffers is delivered by thinking, and, beginning with Mind, comes to understand the tenderness and potency of good which flows from that infinite source governing and blessing man.

True thinking enables the eyes to discern spiritual good, and thereby progress is naturally made into widening areas of joy and appreciation. It enables the individual to "taste and see that the Lord is good." It enables the ear to listen to divine counsels, and it reveals the understanding heart which corresponds to the hearing ear, distinguishing the real from the unreal. A thinker is one who is acquainted with God, who feels the divine touch of Love, and is responsive as an obedient and happy child to all the activities of Spirit.

William P. McKenzie.

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