In practicing Christian Science we need to perceive who we really are and to accept what we perceive. The acceptance of fact is the acknowledgment of Truth. And it is Truth that eliminates error from human experience.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says, "If men would bring to bear upon the study of the Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so-called pains and pleasures of material sense, they would not go on from bad to worse, until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but the whole human family would be redeemed through the merits of Christ,—through the perception and acceptance of Truth" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 202).

Does it seem easier for one to accept the specious arguments of material sense than it does to work diligently to know God and to understand man as God's reflection? It isn't really. But mortal mind may say it is easier or perhaps call it a simple way to avoid coming to grips with an issue. What mortal mind says is the easy way is actually the hard way. And what mortal mind suggests is real must be reversed if one is to see what is true.

Mortals long for freedom, but mortal mind imprisons them within its own ignorance. It is unwilling, until it is instructed out of itself, to seek redemption "through the merits of Christ." That expression of Mrs. Eddy's is a very interesting one. To "be redeemed through the merits of Christ" demands obedience— obedience to the divine Principle of being.

The Apostle Paul voiced a similar thought when he spoke of "casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. 10:5). Perfection is seen in the consciousness that is wholly obedient to the Christ.

If one's thinking is filled with an awareness of the very presence of the Christ, Truth, there is no place for error to enter and none for it to fill. The Christ, as the divine manifestation of the Supreme Being, admits of nothing that denies God's omnipotence and omnipresence.

These facts emphasize the indispensable need for "the perception and acceptance" of the Christ, Truth, if we are to avail ourselves of its redemptive power.

In the second chapter of Genesis we read that Adam was told, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." One is free to eat of the fruits that God has prepared for him, that is, all good, but he is not to partake of the tree of the knowledge of both good and evil, which seems to be right there suggesting it's something that must be reckoned with. If one does partake of it, he will begin to lose even that good which he has; it will begin to die out.

The temptation to believe that evil is present, trying to beguile and to seduce mankind, must be met as nothing. This demands absolute consecration, but the rewards are beyond human evaluation.

We are thinking something almost all the time. Don't we owe it to ourselves to think that which is true? Should we allow ourselves to be unalert enough to forget or to neglect to reject as error the fruit "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," which claims to be almost as ever present as Truth itself?

Error doesn't reject itself. It isn't interested enough, nor does it know enough. It requires Truth to destroy error, and Truth is available to everyone right now under whatever circumstances he finds himself. It makes no difference what one's problem may be, or where or who one is. Truth is always present, and it is available to anyone who needs it. And because it is, one doesn't have to go through a long process of learning and penance before he can begin to demonstrate this fact. Truth is just waiting for you and for me to perceive it and to accept it right now.