Article January 28, 1928 Issue

Alertness

ALFRED MARSHALL VAUGHN

WHAT inspiring pictures the Bible gives us of the talks between Jesus and his disciples! What a wonderful privilege was theirs to be with the one who understood Love so well that he was ready to let men attempt the destruction of his human sense of life, that all might learn that Life is eternal and evil powerless! The Master was ever trying to lift the disciples' concept of life to that wonderful vision of spiritual existence which he ever kept before himself. In many of his talks with them, and in his explanations of his parables, he tried to impress upon their thought the need of continual watchfulness. He knew that only by constant alertness in denying the testimony of the material senses and in declaring the allness and ever-presence of God, could they reach the spiritual consciousness that would enable them to carry on the work of healing the sick and preaching the gospel to those ready to hear of God's wonderful goodness and omnipotence. It was because Jesus was ever alert that he could instantly heal the imperfections of others. It was his constant knowledge of the ever-presence of purity and good that gave him the power to rebuke sin and cast it out. This alertness enabled him to detect the motive behind each word and act.

The ability of the Master, which was the result of his watchfulness, is much needed to-day to enable us to discern the errors which seem to cause disease and in some cases to retard the healing of those seeking help in Christian Science. In order to possess such alertness we must constantly watch our thinking, to keep out the beliefs that man is corporeal and that matter can give pleasure or pain. We must instantly deny any suggestion that evil has power, or that imperfection in any form can be real. We must ever keep before us the omnipotence of Truth and the perfection of the wonderful spiritual creation of divine Mind.

The disciples failed to maintain the spiritual sense of alertness,—the need of which the Master tried so earnestly to impress upon them by word and example,—until after the crucifixion and glorious demonstration of the unreality of death by Christ Jesus. Jesus once told them that their failure to cast out the evil spirit from the child brought to them by his father for healing, was the result of their lack of alertness in "prayer and fasting." In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 222) Mrs. Eddy says that "prayer and fasting" means "refraining from admitting the claims of the senses;" and on page 339 she tells us that to fast is to "silence appetites, passion, and all that wars against Spirit and spiritual power."

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