CHRISTIAN SCIENCE strongly emphasizes the necessity of right thinking before mankind can be happy or harmonious, and the question naturally arises, What is right thought? It is plain that the wilful sinner, the profligate, and the criminal are not right thinkers or they would not be wrong doers; but what of those who wilfully do no wrong, who maintain a high standard of morality, and yet experience suffering and misfortune? What of those whose lives are even saintly, who bless mankind by their noble works and exalted characters, and yet are afflicted with disease or disaster? How can these be said to suffer because of erroneous thought?
Human thought, as is well known, is largely directed by the theories and beliefs which are handed down from generation to generation. Thought, like water, flows in the old channels until new and better ones are provided. So mortals think after the fashion of their antecedents, or in conformity with education, custom, and environment. Certain beliefs have so long been accepted without question or analysis that they have come to be regarded as indisputable facts; but experience has taught that, although mortals have thought in a certain way for centuries, it does not by any means follow that this way is right. For ages it was taught that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it, and mankind went on thinking that way simply because no one had discovered the mistake.
There are fallacies in human belief more detrimental to human welfare than that relating to the earth and the sun, and it is with the correction of these errors that Christian Science has to do. Chief among these may be mentioned the common belief that mind is in matter and therefore tributary to the body; and it is this belief, with the wrong thinking that springs from it, which causes all the miseries of the human race. Mrs. Eddy declares that "Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body and makes body tributary to Mind"(Science and Health, p. 119). This reversal exposes the age-long error that runs through all mortal thought, and that places mankind in their belief under the rule of a false and merciless sense of life and law in matter.
