Article April 2, 1979 Issue

Safe in His care

RICHARD C. BERGENHEIM

Men and women of spiritual vision have long proved that knowing the divine facts of being arrests the threat of crime and disorder. They have been able to acknowledge with the poet, "Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety."^{Ps. 4:8;} We can all share in this confidence, and we will as we purify ourselves with the understanding of God. When we see that God, who is Spirit, Truth, Life itself, is the substance of our being, we find that our perception of life as vulnerable is changed to a sturdy trust in Life as indestructible good.

Criminal behavior is an aggressive form of animal magnetism, or evil. Truth gives us spiritual authority with which to neutralize and destroy it. Evil has no Principle. Its claims of power and organization are a pretense. It is a self-created lie, which would puff itself up in order to appear real and frightening. But it's a fraud lacking cause, substance, potency. The tyranny of evil is overthrown through our progressive recognition of the supreme authority of divine Principle, Love. Principle vanquishes evil.

This understanding is powerful. It protected Moses when the people began to murmur and revolt; and David when his lambs were threatened by bear and lion and his people by the giant, Goliath. It protected Abigail's household from attack. It protected Paul when he was persecuted. An acknowledgment of the omniscient power of divine Mind disarms evil passions and confirms the immutable safety found in Spirit. Each of the above instances has a common thread: an understanding of the Almighty, which lifts one above the waves of evil and carries him into "the secret place of the most High."^91:1; Here, where one is conscious of the presence of God, evil ceases to be; even the belief in the possibility of evil is removed from thought.

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