A PHYSICIAN remarked to a friend of mine the other day: "I use Christian Science all the time. I know that thoughts can cause physical trouble, and I advise my patients to think happy thoughts so that their bodies will be healthier." Certainly such statements are the result of the leavening of human thought by the discovery set forth in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. They evidence the fact that men here and there are awakening in some degree to the mental nature of disease. Christian Science, however, does not teach what this physician inferred, namely, that mere human thinking can control the body harmoniously.
There is but one infinite and all-inclusive Mind, called God, or Spirit. This divine Mind controls man in a manner similar to that in which the sun controls the sunlight —by being source, sustainer, and maintainer of its own expression. The ideas of Mind have no creative power of their own, but forever express the character of their origin, God. Human consciousness, in the degree that it embodies the thoughts of Mind, reflects, but never originates, the power of Mind. Man is Mind's full and perfect expression, embodying all true ideas and needing no support from human thought to be maintained in harmony, wholeness, and grandeur.
An individual came into the office of a Christian Science practitioner after he had visited a psychiatrist. He was suffering from a nervous breakdown. The psychiatrist had patiently and kindly considered his problem and had advised him to watch his thinking and not to allow any fears or any self-condemnation to enter it. He thereupon became very much concerned lest he think wrong thoughts and perpetuate his agonizing difficulty. He made great efforts to watch his thinking, but the wrong kind of thoughts seemed to dance around in his consciousness as if they owned it. His thoughts seemed to chase each other, fear following self-condemnation and self-condemnation following fear.
