The so-called human mind claims that it possesses intelligence of its own. It also claims that this is the result of education, culture, academics, and that it reaches a high state of development under certain kinds of training, association, or environment. It reasons still further that when favored with these advantages it is capable of attaining an exalted place in worldly honors, in business, in society, in mundane affairs. Then it proceeds to teach itself, to make laws for itself to govern itself; but it is always inclined to overrate itself, is frequently in the dilemma of being unable to explain or understand itself, and often becomes entangled in its own inconsistencies, its own ambiguities—all of which is due to the fact that it bases its reasoning, its conclusions, its claims, on the belief that life and intelligence are in matter.
When we turn to Christian Science, our eyes are opened to the great spiritual fact that "the worlds were framed by the word of God." We begin to learn of the spiritual universe, to interpret in terms of Spirit, not matter, and to gain a different concept of intelligence. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 469) our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, defines intelligence as "omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence," as "the primal and eternal quality of infinite Mind, of the triune Principle,—Life, Truth, and Love,—named God." God, divine Mind, then, includes all intelligence. And from a further study of the Bible and our Leader's writings we learn that as man is God's image and likeness, he reflects divine intelligence.
Brain cells are not mentioned in the Bible; but we are given a perfect example of the expression of intelligence in the life of Christ Jesus. His intelligence was such that it enabled him to meet every contingency as its master. There is no record that he used medical lore, yet he healed every kind of ill. He had no material wealth, yet he never lacked food or shelter or raiment; he knew the law better than the lawyers who questioned him; he changed the water into wine contrary to all belief of material law; he fed the multitude in spite of the limiting beliefs held regarding demand and supply; he walked on the water in defiance of the so-called law of gravity; he annihilated space. In fact. Christ Jesus was able, through his perfect understanding of God as Spirit, divine Mind, and of man as His reflection, to meet every human need, to overthrow or annul every material law, not only for himself, but for thousands of others. Did he not prove in all this that his intelligence was not dependent upon conventional educational modes?
