Arizona republican., 1917-10-01
(Tbe Christian Science Monitor)

The familiar prOverb: AS ne tnlnk- eth in his heart so is he" seems never to have been taken seriously by man. kind. Like all comprehensive state ments of truth there is much more to be found here than appears on the sur face, for the passage may be taken to indicate the sum and substance of all that we call living, since it is the thought that we put into any experi- ence, be it great or small, that forms our expression of life. We live in our thinking-our joy and our sorrow, pleasure or pain, health or disease are all thought experiences. Being crea- lures of thought, we are swayed to and fro by the illusions we allow to rule over us, or we are dominated by Truth, if we so elect, even the infinite Mind, which is God Thinking, therefore, is living and right thinking is right liv- ing.
 The importance. then, Of thinking is easily apparent, so apparent that a celebrated philosopher formulated the proposition, "GOgito, ergo sum-" q think, therefore I am.) This state ment, however needs to be received with understanding, for being is not expressed by what might be termed haphazard thinking. thinking that has no reasonable basis in God, good; but
 
 based upon Truth, or to put it mega lively, the thought that is not based upon Truth is not a proof of being nor of true living. Humanity is awaken ing to the great fact that mere con- SciouSness, So- called, is not all there is to living. especially if the physical senses, the five avenues of deceit, are to be taken as the basis of this con- sciousness or thinking.
 Apparently, then, another factor has to be considered in this question of thinking, and that is dominion. If thought is based upon the physical senses we surrender our dominion to matter. So the question arises, What shall we do about matter??" for there can be no true development of right thinking until the place of matter is correctly defined in thought. The best way to answer this question is re- duce all things to a common denOmi- nator, that is, to consider them all from a purely mental basis. This would mean that seven the so-called material universe must be considered as a purely mental product which may be inferred from the fact that through science (not physical sense) the universe is proved to be goverened by law and order, and law and order are purely mental. therefore they could not affect matter if matter were not as mental as law itself. The be- | lief, therefore, taht matter is some thing entirely outside of the mental realm or that it may even become or ganiZed in some mysterious way and be the source, in belief, of intelli gence, is pure supposition. Matter" says Mrs. Eddy on page PIT of Science and Health, "is an error of statement" Mot l. 1~,.% .l of error or the objectification off erro- neous beliefs. It is, in short. the re- suit wholly of wrong thinking. Mat ter being one with erroneous thought, would naturally be subject, as is all error to correction by means of the right thought, or spiritual understand ing, based wholly upon Spirit or upon Life, Truth and Love. Quite obvi- ously, of course one could not correct error by having error as a basis of his thinking.
 Matter. then. is just as mental, for instance, and just as erroneous as dream. A sense of disobedience to God. good, caHs itself a mind in mat ter. another god, and then seeks to in terpret life wholly from the basis of it's own pleasures, fears and shame This dream is, of course, eternally separated from Spirit, Truth or reality. Is that not always true of dreams? This sense of separation ex- presses itself in the mortal beliefs of space and time. No other cause can be assigned for these beliefs than the separation from God, in belief, of all material thinking. When we reach the spiritual understanding that our life is eternally one with God from whom there can never be any separation, we shall have lost all false beliefs of time and space. There is nothing nthe life of Christ Jesus upon which he in sisted with greater persistence than upon his oneness with God. his eternal co-existence with Spirit. It is because he had no sense of separation from God either as to time or space, that Jesus could Obliterate these funda- mentals of matter out of his earthly