It would seem that there is no harder task in the whole world than that of thinking in terms of pure Mind. Jesus of Nazareth, of course, succeeded in doing this: what are termed his miracles are the conclusive answer to any skepticism. But when you come to the philosophers, either before his day or after it it is a different thing. To base a philosophy on pure mind, meaning the human mind, is one thing: to think in terms of your own axioms is entirely another thing. Did Zeno or Plato, one wonders, ever get near it? Berkeley we know did not; the incident of tar water settles that forever. Yet such a method is essential to all idealism, and Mrs. Eddy made this absolutely clear when she wrote, on page 269 of Science and Health: "The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul." The poor philosophers got muddled in the process. They mixed Mind with mind, the divine with the human, in hopeless confusion.
The whole of Mrs. Eddy's teaching centers in the fact that matter is a mere phenomenon of mortal mind, and that consequently, as the great idealistic philosophers have pointed out, matter exists simply as an appearance or an idea of the human mind. But Berkeley, as a Christian bishop, could not escape from the existence of a divine cause. Consequently, he traced the human mind back to Spirit, and so made Spirit the ultimate of this human mind, and so of matter. The discovery of Mrs. Eddy, which she owed to her determined efforts to reduce the gospel of the New Testament to practice, was the fact that there is no connection between the human mind and the divine Mind, but that this human mind is a mere counterfeit of divine Mind, and that, as a consequence of this, its phenomena of matter are in turn counterfeits of spiritual creation. This is what Mrs. Eddy is alluding to when she writes, on pages 60 and 61 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand."
When, consequently, the student of Christian Science sets to work to resolve things into thoughts, he needs to remember perpetually the fact that the material phenomena amidst which he habitually moves are but so many hints of a spiritual creation which exists eternally and indestructibly. The very essence, then, of resolving things into thoughts is never to lose sight of this fact, and to strive perpetually to grasp exactly what Mrs. Eddy means in saying, on page 503 of Science and Health, "Hence the eternal wonder,—that infinite space is peopled with God's ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms." Everything that exists must exist as the idea of divine Mind, and so reflect that Mind. Therefore, since the human mind is but a counterfeit of this divine Mind, the material phenomena produced by this human mind, which are presented all the time to the human senses, instead of being accepted as objective realities must be regarded simply as hints of some actual spiritual fact. In this way the student of Christian Science will begin to realize that when Mrs. Eddy says, in the passage previously quoted from, "That material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand." she is simply saying precisely what Christ Jesus was saying when he declared, "Neither shall they say. Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you," a passage which, in the margin of the Revision, is translated, "the kingdom of God is in the midst of you."
