Spiritual-Mindedness

Duncan Sinclair

How beautiful is the message contained in the third and fourth verses of the twenty-fourth Psalm: "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully"! Very simple; yet, how true! He that is pure in his thoughts, clean in his living, humble, and honest—he shall progress spiritually.

The purpose of Christian Science is to aid men spiritually; to acquaint them with divine reality—God and His creation—and, by inference, inform them regarding the unreal. By this means it empowers them to cast the false out of their consciousness, and so become increasingly more spiritually-minded—purer, happier, healthier, holier. It finds many in the rough, so to speak, and by presenting to them the perfect spiritual model shows them what they must discard in their thinking to conform to that model.

What is the perfect model which Christian Science holds before the spiritual vision of mankind? It is the real man. And who is the real man? He is the image of God, even as the Bible declares him to be. Nothing could be plainer than the teaching of Christian Science on the nature of the real man. God, infinite Mind, is reflected or expressed by man, His idea. Thus man, the reflection of God, is cognizant of the perfect spiritual ideas or qualities which constitute Deity. Perfection is manifested by him; harmony, purity, goodness, love, health, but not a trace of the opposite of these. Inharmony, impurity, lovelessness, evil, disease, have no place in man because they have no place in God. Being utterly unlike perfect Mind, they are utterly unreal.

It is highly important to recognize the fact that only the real man exists; that there is not the man of God's creating—spiritual man—and another, so-called material man. The latter, the false sense of man, is discarded by mortals as they perceive through Christian Science the perfect model, their real spiritual selfhood. This process is very different from trying to make a "clean thing out of an unclean," from endeavoring to bring perfection out of imperfection. That indeed cannot be done. Christian Science teaches that God's idea, man, has never fallen from a state of perfection to one of imperfection. It declares that man has ever been the perfect reflection of God, and that he ever will be this perfect reflection; and it shows that the process of salvation consists in understanding the nature of the real man in his godliness and perfection, and dismissing from human consciousness all that is false about God's image.

As we become more spiritually-minded, as the perfect spiritual model is held more constantly by us in consciousness, we increasingly gain the victory over materiality or evil. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 207), "Because God is Spirit, evil becomes moreapparent and obnoxious proportionately as we advance spiritually, until it disappears from our lives." It is not that evil is real and that as a real entity it disappears from our lives; rather is it that the erroneous belief is displaced from our consciousness proportionately to our spirituality, even as in the experience of a child the erroneous notion that twice five is eleven is destroyed by his knowing that twice five is ten.

Every genuine student of Christian Science has proved for himself the value of spiritual-mindedness: he has experienced healing through it, healing of sin and sickness; and by it he has attained to a measure of happiness which previously he had probably considered well-nigh unattainable. Besides, he has come to understand the inestimable value of spiritual understanding when it is brought to bear on erroneous conditions of whatever nature. Our Leader speaks of this on page 9 of "Rudimental Divine Science" in the words, "The spiritual power of a scientific, right thought, without a direct effort, an audible or even a mental argument, has oftentimes healed inveterate diseases." And that spiritual power is ours to use for the good of our fellow men through the right thinking which Christian Science makes possible to all.

The Christian Science movement has been built in large measure on the healings which have resulted from the spiritual understanding of its members. The revered Leader of the movement, Mary Baker Eddy, laid its foundations in just that way: first, she herself was healed through spiritual understanding; next, she demonstrated the healing power of Truth and Love on behalf of others, in numerous instances. And thus, instructed by herself and by study of the Bible and Science and Health, her students followed in her steps, until now, throughout the world, more than ten thousand practitioners of Christian Science, whose registering in The Christian Science Journal was approved by The Christian Science Board of Directors, carry on the work of healing—not to speak of the vast army of faithful Christian Scientists, other than those whose names are registered in The Christian Science Journal as public practitioners of Christian Science, who in a measure are doing similar valuable service to mankind. And this practice will go on in ever-increasing proportions as the spiritual-mindedness of Christian Scientists grows, until eventually all men shall be consciously under the divine influence of Truth.

Duncan Sinclair

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Testifying for Truth

June 8, 1935

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