CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS habitually declare that God is the only Mind. The fact that this is being done today is in itself one form of proof that the truth endures, for this declaration is a continuation of the affirmation of God's presence and power begun in earliest Biblical statements and reiterated throughout the sacred pages. The supremacy of Mind is indicated variously and abundantly by Scriptural writers, the Psalmist, for instance, declaring of God, "His understanding is infinite;" and infinite understanding precludes the possibility of any intelligence besides the divine infinitude. The oneness of divine Mind is being widely accepted today as basic, unalterable, and demonstrable.

However, one who is not conversant with the Bible or with Christian Science may ask, How do you know there is but one Mind; how can this assertion be proved true? The question is a reasonable one; it is one that Christian Scientists in their thinking and living must constantly answer for themselves and others. The physical senses cannot help us. They can give no proof of God. Indeed, many of the secrets of material things they cannot fathom, and others they can recognize only through observation of certain effects. How much less, then, can they know God as infinite Mind, expressed only in divine ideas!

The only way we can know God is by recognizing that which manifests His nature, that which is expressive of divine Principle. And in recognizing His ideas, and accepting and utilizing them, we at the same time feel the effects of this divine influence upon our consciousness and in our experience. We find that knowing God as Mind begins to lessen our belief in an opposite so-called mind in matter; and we see the errors of this false sense and their effects gradually disappearing. Desiring to rid ourselves of the evils of mortal existence, we turn to God and claim the proof that He is infinite Mind, and that His man is ever expressing Him. Then we learn that, as Mary Baker Eddy teaches (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 469), "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality."

The importance of the recognition of God as infinite divine intelligence is seen in His instant and constant availability, for we can call upon Mind for everything we need to know; and what we need in our daily living are the wisdom and judgement, the fearlessness and kindness, the joy and strength, wherewith to conduct our lives and affairs aright. "The Lord giveth wisdom," as it is said in Proverbs; "out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." Knowing God aright, Christ Jesus gave his disciples power "to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease," and he bade them be wise and harmless. And the Apostle James encourages everyone by his saying, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." In this way, through receiving and utilizing the pure qualities and ideas of Spirit, we are enabled to correct and dismiss the weakness, the ills and limitations, which come from mortal mind, and to bring out harmonious results.

Great as is the fact that through divine Science men can learn to correct their wrong thoughts and exterminate the error which has beclouded their lives, there is added to it the blessing that they can learn to detect and reject wrong thoughts and suggestions before error is expressed in their actions. Christian Science is thus invaluable in its preventive power, through encouraging a constant self-correction and spiritualization of thought. The great revelation that God is the only intelligence clearly shows us that it is through our entertaining of spiritual thoughts and ideas that all the errors of material sense which trouble us can be and must be overcome. Not through using one error can another error be corrected; but only through realization of the truth that there is one Mind, infinite good, of which man is the perfect, spiritual reflection, can the belief in evil be exterminated.

What faithful striving the knowledge of these truths calls for on our part, in abandoning the errors that would hold us mentally enslaved, deluded, unhappy, limited, in the belief of a mind in matter, opposed to God! It is not enough that we call on God for wisdom and love; we must be willing to strive to forsake the belief that there is power or reality in unwisdom and hate, and thus cease to harbor error in our own hearts. We worship God aright in our endeavor to understand and reflect Him; to purify our thoughts from the false sense of a selfhood apart from God. And in this endeavor to recognize no mind but the divine Mind we find our capacities and abilities to receive and express good increased. In "Retrospection and Introspection" (pp. 56, 57) our Leader writes, "Divine Science demands mightly wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities."

If at times this way of self-correction and spiritualization of thought seems difficult, we should know that it seems so only to the finite sense, which is being destroyed, and that the Science of being, while it requires fidelity, honesty, and unceasing endeavor, affords the one true way to approach and attain reality—heavenly harmony. And this taste of bliss is gained here today proportionately to our faithfulness in adhering to the truth that God is the only Mind, and that man, including all true selfhood, exists as idea, reflection, in the changeless divine infinitude.

This is a way which material sense cannot follow; it is the way of Christ, Truth; it is the way to peace which is beyond the power of the world to give. Isaiah said, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." Gladly, then, should Christian Scientists constantly and persistently ask God for wisdom and knowledge and understanding, that they may realize and prove daily and continuously, in whatever circumstance of trial or of happiness, that God alone is Mind and is All. And only by their fidelity to Truth, in the spiritualization of thought and the abandonment of error, do they prove that they are gaining an increasing measure of spiritual understanding and of peace.