Article March 3, 1934 Issue

"Alertness to Duty"

BURKE C. MORRISSEY

It is the privilege of every Christian Scientist always to think the truth about every incident, problem, or act which presents itself to his consciousness, whether bearing on individual, community, national, or international experience. Usually we as Christian Scientists are alert to detect and destroy the erroneous thought about ourselves which would enter our mental home and claim to deter us in our spiritual progress. But are we always as watchful and protective regarding the erroneous beliefs which claim to be more or less universal, and which may claim in due course to affect us individually unless we are awake to declare our freedom from them?

We must not be deceived into allowing subtle inimical beliefs even a temporary place in our thinking. That evil conditions claim to be real is obvious; but to allow ourselves to believe that they truly exist or ever have existed would be to deny the infinitude of God and the perfection of His creation: it would be allowing ourselves to be mesmerized by a form of aggressive mental suggestion, instead of taking our mental stand for the truth which even now is healing those conditions, until eventually evil's every claim to reality shall have been wiped away.

"For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence," writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, on page 492 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Demonstration of spiritual perfection in the healing of the individual and the washing away of hate, suspicion, and fear from the individual and from universal humanity springs from the understanding of man's perfection. The irrepressible desire for happiness must be coupled with vigorous and positive denial of the wrong, and confident affirmation of the truth as real, until the latter is realized and manifested. "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." This simple declaration of Jesus points to the rule of healing, but it remained for Christian Science to unlock the treasures of the Scriptures and to show mankind how Christ Jesus healed; to show what is the truth that makes men free, and how to uncover and erase the false beliefs that would destroy the peace of true living and loving.

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