Article August 26, 1911 Issue

PROTECTION AGAINST TEMPTATION

FRANK H. LEONARD.

All the processes of Christian Science are mental, and they lead one to that primal cause which we recognize to be God, good. What may be termed the processes of false belief are also mental, and lead back to the supposed negation of good. When we come face to face with our daily problems, we find we must turn to either one or the other; to Truth or to error. If we turn toward Truth, we find a protection which means to us in its ultimate all that is good; if, however, we turn toward error, we immediately seem to be flooded with discord and disharmony of all kinds.

The first view one gains of Christian Science, on being healed from sin or disease through its redemptive ministry, fills him, naturally, with joy and happiness. It seems as though he could never again be conscious of aught but good, and that existence must continue to be one calm, peaceful, undisturbed realization that he lives, moves, and has his being in God. He has accepted the allness of God, and realized that all things are mental in their conception and development, but failing to abide "in the secret place of the most High," and so falling from the high estate of protection in continued good works, he finds in his experience something discordant and inharmonious. As this condition presents itself, his first feeling is one of amazement; then follow distress, resentment, self-pity, discouragement, and at length wonderment, perchance, if there is any God after all.

Of course, when one reaches this mental state of seeming separation from God, he has reached the attitude of the muck-raker in "Pilgrim's Progress," who never lifted his eyes above the dirt and gloom beneath him. Finding that the distress remains so long as this continues, and being unwilling to suffer, the mental attitude is likely to change somewhat, and after a while there comes just a little ray of light; then the lifting of the thought reveals the "way," and the upward progress has really begun. He looks above instead of into evil. He begins to realize that somewhere there is a protection which stands always ready to shield from everything that is inharmonious and discordant. In order that he may realize this protection, however, every one of his downward steps must be retraced, and in this return he finds that as temptation, which claims to be power, presents itself to him, the protection is at hand which is his "shield and buckler,"—the "perfect love" which, as the apostle tells us, casts out fear and renders man unassailable.

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