In the Preface to the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. vii), "The time for thinkers has come." This call is not a call to mere intellectualism. It is a call to spiritual awakening, to purified, enlightened thought. Everyone thinks. One does not live without thought. True knowing is true living. The necessity is to learn how to think or know in its truest sense.
This, Christian Science is teaching its followers to do. With its logical, scientific explanation of God and His laws it not only satisfies reason, but gives to its adherents a demonstrable understanding of how, through right thinking, spiritual law may be beneficially applied in human affairs. This Science discloses the mental nature of all things, the divine nature of all that is real and good, and the erroneous nature of all that is not good. Through it we learn that man is not a material, limited mortal, but a spiritual, unlimited being, reflecting the all-knowing Mind, which is God.
Our need is to choose thoughts wisely and to use them intelligently. To do this requires that we acknowledge and claim as our own man's inherent spiritual dominion, and therefore his freedom from every phase of false mental influence. Each idea of God has its own indissoluble connection with God and reflects Him. Thoughts unfolding from God, divine Mind, are replete in goodness, wisdom, and power; and as we claim and use these thoughts, they guide human experience into health, harmony, and achievement. Since the infinite storehouse of Mind's perfect, unlimited ideas is open to all, excellence and variety of individual thinking can in no wise be limited. Therefore, in reality, no one can do better or broader thinking for us than we can do for ourselves.
True, there are times in human experience when we are greatly helped by the counsel, example, or spiritual work of a kind helper. But no one can think or know for another. In the course of progress Spiritward everyone must learn to think for himself. The greatest good anyone can do another is to awaken in him an alert awareness of his own ability to reflect God, Mind, and thus to care properly for himself.
The wise man said that as one "thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Prov. 23:7). As human beings, we are what our thinking makes us and are where our thinking places us. We do not suffer any hurt, experience any lack, commit any sin, or manifest any illness for which our mental acceptance of the error is not wholly responsible. How important it is, then, to turn to God for thoughts—to receive and utilize the spiritual ideas applicable to the need of the day! How important to replace retreating, frightened, or lazy thinking, which keeps one in narrow grooves of limitation, frustration, and defeat, with inspired, vigorous thinking, which elevates, widens, and beautifies human experience!
If we would reach a level which exceeds our present status, we must lift up our own standard of thought through an ever-increasing acceptance and utilization of spiritual ideas. No one can go higher than his own thinking takes him. The remedy for substandard conditions is to raise spiritually the standard of individual thought. If adversity seems to be present, let us think higher than adversity. Let us claim God's law, the law of good, as the only law operative in our experience. Elevation of thought results in elevation of achievement.
Having learned that man is spiritual and free, and that he has dominion over error, the spiritually progressive thinker no longer falls back on birth, environment, or untoward circumstances as excuses for lack of health, happiness, or supply. Asserting his God-given independence from the materialism which would claim him, he takes possession of his own mentality and shoulders responsibility for his own thoughts and acts. Only thus can he come to a satisfying state of self-government and establish the dominion of Truth and Love in his life.
In the earnest effort to overcome error with Truth he finds that spiritual ideas present themselves with ever-increasing power and multiplicity. These ideas come as thought to human consciousness—a divinely mental force for good, impelling one to higher vision and greater achievement.
Seemingly opposed to these spiritual thought forces, although in reality Spirit has no opposite, are the negative, so-called thought forces of evil. Every aggressive mental suggestion, every so-called evil force, pressing upon human consciousness comes as thought. Right here we can employ the positive, assuring ideas of all-knowing Mind and know that evil has no force, that its erroneous impulsions are worthless and powerless. Detecting and rejecting every phase of false belief with ever-present, intelligent spiritual ideas results in the certain solving of whatever the human problem may be.
Throughout the ages men and women have felt the necessity for better thinking, and have striven for it. When Moses received the Ten Commandments, he must have been reaching out mentally for a higher concept of God and of His spiritual law, as well as for an understanding of how this law can be applied to human affairs. He perceived Mind's demand upon thought, as evidenced by the fact that each commandment makes a demand upon human consciousness.
We need to remember that the human body is embraced in thought—a humanly mental concept of identity—and that we govern our own individual concept entirely with our own thinking, whether for good or evil. Jesus knew this when he released from bondage of belief, and so from her infirmity, the woman who for eighteen years had been bowed together and could not raise herself up. There was never a time when she could not have walked straight and free, had she ceased to bind herself with false beliefs inhering in her own thinking. Disease can never touch anyone who refuses to be mentally impressed by error and demonstrates man's perfection.
Christ Jesus, the greatest thinker the world has ever known, counseled us to guard our thinking; and our Leader, his faithful follower, did the same. When Jesus said (Mark 13:37), "What I say unto you I say unto all. Watch," it was not a call to set up a negative, fearful watch against material conditions, but to maintain an intelligent, spiritual watch over human thinking, to keep it spiritually alert, awake, aware—quick to reject error and quick to make vigorous use of right ideas.
Mrs. Eddy admonishes us in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany"' (p. 213): "Watch your thoughts, and see whether they lead you to God and into harmony with His true followers. Guard and strengthen your own citadel more strongly." A right mental watch keeps one alert to discern the nature of the mental knockings at the door of human consciousness. Sooner or later everyone must learn to be instant in his rejection of evil and unalterably decisive in his stand for absolute Truth. One cannot mentally compromise with error and still demonstrate the law of God.
Within the sheltered secrecy of his own thinking everyone can utilize and prove the power of good. Everyone can go forward from wherever he finds himself, and everyone must eventually rise to the highest excellence of spiritual knowing. In this excellence there is no inferiority or superiority, no inequality, but fullness of expression for all.
How precious are our thoughts! How careful we should be to guard and protect them! As we think, so do we live; for it is in our thinking that we shape and develop our human experience. Well may we obey the divine demand (Lev. 19:2), "Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy." If, each day, our thinking approaches a little closer to the highest spiritual purity which is holiness itself, then we are coming nearer to proving the dominion of real selfhood, wherein we are at one with God.
