"We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them." ^{Walden, "Higher Laws";} So wrote Henry David Thoreau at a time when the world generally may have been less aware that it is today of the direct influence mentality bears upon physicality.

In marked degree, thinking finds expression in experience, as well as in facial features. Human thought holds within itself the responsibility for individual susceptibility to good or evil, and has a strong effect upon bodily, economic, and even atmospheric conditions. Many believe that certain people are prone to accidents and that the mental expectancy of the recurrence of sickness has often brought about an entire family's chronic liability to ill health. But what mankind classifies as disease is nothing more than the objectification of mental errors, such as resentment, fear, sin, worry, and so forth. The body itself is a mental concept, and its expression of concord or discord is influenced by the formative substance of thought. How important, then, that one's thinking be bulwarked by an increasingly spiritual approach to all issues, personal and otherwise!

Every thought we entertain, depending upon its spiritual or material content, carries weight either for good or evil, affecting health as well as character. Thinking must be spiritually improved before physical conditions can be permanently bettered; it must rest consciously in God, reflecting the love, joy, intelligence, and power that belong to divine Mind and are reflected by His individual ideas. Thought increasingly anchored in God, good, manifests spiritual stability, and this in turn has a telling effect upon success, happiness, and health.

Mary Baker Eddy, whose devotion to God and love for humanity led her to the discovery and founding of Christian Science, was keenly aware of the role thought plays in universal and individual welfare. At one time, in discussing the necessity for Christian Scientists' conformity to state health laws, specifically those regarding vaccination, she commented: "So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much. But every thought tells, and Christian Science will overthrow false knowledge in the end." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 345;}

The prophet Jeremiah received and voiced this warning to his faithless countrymen: "Behold, I [God] will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it." ^{Jer. 6:19;} It is noteworthy that the predicted calamities would not be divinely inflicted but would be "the fruit of their thoughts," the self-inflicted suffering always following disobedience to God's law of goodness. The punishment, or penalty, of sin is the apparent experiencing of sin, and it lasts only as long as the belief itself lasts. The same is true of sickness; it is nothing more than a fearful, ignorant, sinful, or willful belief in matter as the conditioner of health, and its duration is determined by the belief, not by the body. Every morbid concept of sin or disease entertained in thought has its marked effect upon moral and physical well-being. A Christian Science practitioner once made the statement that disease is but a smoke screen thrown up by mortal mind to conceal the wrong thoughts that are producing the physical manifestation. One may say, then, that it is erring belief, disguised as an ailing body, that stands in need of correction and healing.

Right thinking—in other words, divinely directed thinking—has its source in spiritual energy, divine Mind's transcendent Christ-power. This power is supreme over materiality, and the effects of right thinking are godliness, peace, health, wisdom, and joy, wherein are no penalties, but only infinite blessings.

Christ Jesus understood that true consciousness is neither a derivative nor a prerogative of matter but the reflected activity of God, good, and that the body and all human circumstances embraced in God-reflected thought are healthy and harmonious. In his healing works he demonstrated that no discordant physical condition can resist the healing action of spiritually mental therapeutics. He practiced healing through the divine all-power and taught it to his followers.

The Apostle John records Jesus' instantaneous healing of a man who had been suffering from a crippling infirmity for thirty-eight years. Evidently the great Master discerned that, in this instance, sin was the latent error whose physical effect was helplessness. Upon later meeting the man in the temple, Jesus warned, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." ^{John 5:14;} The Master knew that the unresisting indulgence of sin can fulfill itself in human experience as error and it is often only when the accumulation of latent materiality comes to the surface as physical suffering that men become conscious of its presence and begin to seek release.

The action of the Christ in thought is a potent force for good, and wherever a gleam of spiritual receptivity exists, there the healing truth finds entrance, bringing mental, moral, and physical freedom. It is comforting to realize that although error's claim may have a record of thirty-eight years, it does not take thirty-eight years to expunge it! The touch of the Christ, Truth, has an immediate as well as an effective result, and will always "overthrow false knowledge in the end." The spiritual clarity, radiance, and serenity of Christly thinking will be spontaneously shown forth, not only in one's body and in facial expression but in his entire human experience. Then health will be recognized as the law of all being, and holiness as the condition of all life.

Mrs. Eddy beautifully summarizes the entire subject in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered. Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew. You will never fear again except to offend God, and you will never believe that heart or any portion of the body can destroy you." ^{Science and Health, p. 425.}