Many of the frictions and conflicts of life are traceable to the irrational rigidities of the human mind. Fortunately the warming influence of pure Christianity melts frozen attitudes and regenerates human character. This healing influence replaces mortal mulishness with the graces of Love. It brings the refreshing mental resiliency derivable from Spirit.

There's a considerable need everywhere for this moderating, stabilizing, civilizing influence of the Christ-spirit. The punishing angularities of mortal mind range from ordinary bullheadedness to the excesses of monomania and obsessive zealotry. Fads and crazes show at a casual level how susceptible the human mind is to its own frailties; more serious indeed are opinionated tendencies to harp on a fixed idea, prejudices deeply entrenched, and the rigid intolerance that inflicts so many cruelties and sorrows.

One finds some of these mortal elements exposed in one of the shortest documents in the Old Testament, the book of Jonah. Twentieth-century commentators regard this little book as an object lesson, even an allegory. One authority sees it as a "humorous satire" that "takes on the character of parable." ^{Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1971), pp. 480–481 .} Another describes it as containing "the high-water mark of [Old Testament] teaching." ^{J. R. Dummelow, The One-Volume Bible Commentary (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1954), p. 576 .}

The book is the story of a man whose settled attitudes and hardened convictions were quite rudely shaken up by the hand of his God. Several specific lessons emerge. One is the emphasis on God's infinite compassion and mercy, His deliverance of all who repent and show kindness of heart. This message contrasts vividly with the narrowness and exclusivity of Jonah, who typifies the bitter hatred and contempt for the heathen that characterized nationalistic Israelite thinking in the era when the book was written. The message may also have served as a protest against false prophets who—in the guise of serving God—did nothing but repeat cruel and harsh denunciations against other peoples.

Jonah was disobedient. When God commissioned him to go to Nineveh to warn the people against their wickedness and convert them, he fled in the opposite direction to get away "from the presence of the Lord." ^{Jonah 1:3.} (One commentator says Jonah hated the Ninevites and feared that God would spare them from destruction). ^{Dummelow, p. 576 .} There followed a storm at sea, the swallowing of Jonah by a "great fish," his fervent prayer for deliverance (quickly answered), and his journey to Nineveh to obey at length God's command. Surprisingly, perhaps, his effort to convert the Ninevites proved immediately successful; they turned from their evil ways.

No doubt the most intriguing lesson comes in the climax. Indignant that the God of Israel should pity the heathen, and with wounded pride that his attitude has been rebuked, Jonah becomes angry with God. He goes out to the environs of the city to watch what will happen to it. There he is sheltered by a gourd vine which, according to the allegory, God first causes to spring up overnight and then to wither and droop. When Jonah is incensed at such treatment of the gourd, we read that the Lord replies, "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" ^{Jonah 4:10, 11.} Thus the narrative rebukes Jonah and records God's embracing mercy toward a wayward but repentant people.

The parable calls to mind the great lesson of not being "tyrannical and proscriptive from lack of love." Those words appear in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures where the author, Mary Baker Eddy, speaks in this way of the nature of God as Love: "Not materially but spiritually we know Him as divine Mind, as Life, Truth, and Love. We shall obey and adore in proportion as we apprehend the divine nature and love Him understandingly, warring no more over the corporeality, but rejoicing in the affluence of our God. Religion will then be of the heart and not of the head. Mankind will no longer be tyrannical and proscriptive from lack of love,—straining out gnats and swallowing camels." ^{Science and Health, p. 140.}

Isn't it true that all too often a straining out of gnats and a swallowing of camels results from allowing oneself, in effect, to be "possessed" by dogmatic opinions—carried away by fanatical notions or bias? Yet the unyielding instincts of the carnal mind do melt before the solvent of Love. We prove this as we cultivate meekness, humility, and patience through sincere prayer.

There is an illuminating contrast between Jonah and Jesus. Jonah listened to his own narrow and faulty opinions and was driven by them to the point of disaster. Christ Jesus listened continually to the Father's guidance and followed it. As he said, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." ^{John 5:30.} And again, "He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." ^{John 8:29.}

Not only are mortals often driven by stubbornly held opinions, but also, human wisdom tends to approve this so long as the opinion is "good." Yet the Science of Christ, revealing man's true relationship to God as His inseparable reflection, shows that God's man is not driven by opinions; he is governed by divine Mind.

As the compound idea and complete expression of divine Mind, the real man includes all true ideas and manifests and enjoys them. But he is not subordinate to them. As Science and Health tells us, "Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else." ^{Science and Health, p. 481.}

Thus man in Science is neither servant to ideas nor a slave to opinions. He serves God alone, as envisioned in the scriptural standard, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." ^{Matt. 4:10.}

Learning and living this great fundamental of Christian metaphysics, we will overcome mortal claims that we are the prisoner of our own opinions, the agent of congealed prejudices, or the victim of mortally mental rigidity. Seeing more clearly our real status as Mind's reflection, we will become more willing to change our views according to the demands of spiritual growth. We will gain clearer insight into the real nature of man—our own real individuality—responsive alone to Mind, including and expressing Mind's glorious conceptions, and blessed with God-given dominion over all things.

DeWITT JOHN