Article July 13, 1946 Issue

Shake Off the Beast

ALICE K. METZ

Following the account of shipwreck, the deliverance of Paul and the other prisoners from the stormy sea, and their safe landing on the island of Melita, an incident is related in the twenty-eighth chapter of Acts which is worthy of consideration.

While Paul was assisting the friendly natives in building a fire, "there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand." The natives, seeing the "venomous beast" clinging to Paul's hand, immediately concluded, "No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." But as they watched, expecting to witness Paul's sudden death, "he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm." There is no intimation either of panic or of fear in Paul's thought or action. He did not strike at the viper or look about for material means of help; he simply shook the viper into the consuming heat of the fire.

In marked contrast with this instant rejection of error is the attitude which listens to error's claims and fears them. Mary Baker Eddy in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," writes (p. 411): "Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed. Disease is an image of thought externalized." And she continues, "Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body."

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