Editorial December 14, 1929 Issue

In God's Keeping

Violet Ker Seymer

The blessed words of the Psalmist, "He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways," have always brought to the spiritually-minded a sense of safety, guidance, and protection in times of danger. They have lifted fear from human thought as sunshine lifts the mist from the ground. But to the Christian Scientist these words mean much more than protection from danger. They mean that by entertaining angels, God's thoughts, one shall be protected from giving hospitality to any suggestions that would defile consciousness; that one shall be kept in the way of purity and progress through reflecting divine Love, which knows no evil. Not in some of his ways, in some of his thinking, but in all his mental ways, should the Christian Scientist honestly seek divine guidance and correction. This correction is God's divine way of protecting mankind from influences detrimental to spiritual growth. Who does not long to be able to lay open to the light of Truth his innermost thoughts, and find there only the reflection of God, divine Mind?

On page 286 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life." From what falsities shall His thoughts keep us? From believing in imperfection, matter, death; from gossip; from sensationalism and in art or literature. Christian Scientists do not go out of their way, out of the way of Truth, Life, and Love, the ways of divine Principle, to take into their consciousness anything unclean. While much that is wholesome and constructive in art and literature serves its purpose, yet that which, even though dramatic and forceful, presents humanity as degraded, the slave of the senses, has no attraction of those who are seeking to reflect the simplicity and healing power of the Mind of Christ. Only those who keep themselves from "a false matter," as enjoined by Moses, win the benediction later voiced by Isaiah, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." This "perfect peace" is won in proportion as thought is undeviatingly stayed on the truth about God, man, and the universe, the truth about life and substance.

In the Old Testament we read that Jabez, whose words may be said to voice the universal need of humanity, "called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested." Now experience shows that the fulfillment of one's fervent prayers hinges upon correspondingly fervent obedience to God's requirements, which these prayers call forth. Those whose sincere desire for regeneration rises so purely to God, as did that of Jabez, cannot fail to find their reward in the prevention of evil thinking, and the sequent protection from discordant experiences such as overtake the unwary. But there must be this sequence. With an all-wise God at hand to guide and guard, what then remains to grieve one? In the hour of our temptation do we grasp more firmly or less firmly the hand of God, the demands and the bestowals of divine Principle?

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