Articles

Imperative characteristics are those which are positive and binding. They are the indispensable, indwelling requirements which cannot be shunned or shirked by the Christian Scientist.

The divine Mind—and there is no other real Mind—expresses itself in ideas which are at once comprehensible to the Mind conceiving them. These ideas are complete, so that no imperfection exists in the spiritual creation because of omission, deficiency, or oversight.

The golden thread of God's love to man running all through the Bible shows that wherever and whenever there has been a receptive consciousness, the Christ has become to that one a living reality and a demonstrable power. The consciousness of Truth and Love with which Mary Baker Eddy was blessed, opened her heart to the Christ Science we have today.

" As for me. thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever.

The human mind loves mystery and miracle. It likes to believe that there is resident within itself an occult power that the initiated can use to produce effects that the uninitiated know not how to combat, and so must become its victims.

The Phoenicians, famed throughout the ancient world as hardy mariners, inhabited a strip of land bordering the Mediterranean and situated to the west and northwest of Galilee. Galilee itself was shunned by the orthodox Jews as virtually Gentile territory, and while Phoenicia was ordinarily viewed with still greater contempt, the Bible tells us of two faithful women, the one in the Old Testament and the other in the New, who, undaunted by their pagan environment, sought and obtained healing for their children.

Many young people today are called upon to serve in the armed forces of their country. Often this means separation from home and loved ones, or the interruption of a promising college or business career.

Increasingly it is recognized that the determining factor in human experience is one's own thinking. Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad.

When Job was struggling to replace his former belief of health, substance, and friendship, which had proved to be but a house built on sand, with a right understanding of true values, as bestowed of God, his friend Elihu, who sought to turn him from human to spiritual concepts, saw that the need was for "a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness. " This might be called the keynote for healing practice.

In Jesus' wilderness experience, all the subtle devices of the tempter were employed to persuade him that the divine power could be used for himself personally. The Master, detecting the artful philosophy of the serpent, cloaked with the letter of Scriptural texts, summarily silenced the lies with the inspired Word of the Scriptures.