TO get along well with other people is largely a matter of understanding them. If preoccupied with our own thoughts or engrossed in our own feelings, we do not see beyond this limited horizon; but a wise and loving heart has the ability to discern, and the charity to understand, what is going on in the thoughts of others. To manifest harmony and understanding in our dealings with friends, relatives, or associates should be the aim of everyone; yet even Christian Scientists who may have proved for themselves a buoyant sense of well-being have sometimes found it difficult to think correctly about people —other people—who are apt to do or say such surprising things, resulting perhaps in hurt feelings, animosity, and strife.
Here, as in all else, the Christian Scientist has the sufficient example of Jesus, the great Way-shower. Not only did Jesus know the spiritual facts of being; he also knew what those about him were thinking. Generally he knew this better than did the persons themselves, and often without their having spoken a word. The Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, the Pharisees who watched Jesus' healings so as to find fault with them, the ailing woman who touched the hem of his garment, Peter concerned over paying the tax money, and Judas about to betray him— the thoughts of all these and many others were quite transparent to Jesus.
What gave him this extraordinary insight? It was his acquaintance with the Science of divine Mind. It was not human psychology, nor the desire to gain friends or to please persons. Neither was there anything mysterious about Jesus' ability to discern human thought. The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," contains a chapter called "Christian Science versus Spiritualism," in the course of which the author, Mary Baker Eddy, discusses at some length our Master's spiritual discernment. A careful study of this chapter, and particularly of pages 83 to 87, 94, and 95, will supply the explanation of this phenomenon. At one point Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 94): "Our Master read mortal mind on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind. An approximation of this discernment indicates spiritual growth and union with the infinite capacities of the one Mind."
