It's not a happy thought, Cain's vagabond wanderings "in the land of Nod," ^{Gen. 4:16.} and today's Christianly scientific thinker takes active steps to eliminate from his or her consciousness those false views of life that would invite such punishment.

How does one handle those depths of evil that would punish us—hate, envy, injustice, despair, apathy, disease? How does one avoid wanderings into the mortal, material sense of such life prospects?

Answers to these questions are important if we're to stay spiritually alert and out of the drowsy, dreary, suffering mental environment epitomized by the land of Nod.

The Psalmist gives us an important hint: "Great peace have they which love thy law." ^{Ps. 119:165.} To love the law of God—to systematically conform our lives, through His eternal Son, to this law of divine principle—brings the spiritual capacity to think and act correctly, even amid clouds of evil. Principle, our one cause, our "Father which art in heaven," is the ever-present power that includes nothing unlike Himself.

To love God, that is, to conform to His law and be at one with Principle as its likeness—even for a prayerful moment—invokes the infinite resources of good, divine Love. This spiritual illumination brings a cleansing, healing, strengthening effect. It eliminates what is ungodlike. Our aim is to stay always at one with and express the harmonious life and being of Principle, which means the expression in our lives of the beauty and order of God's universe. This keeps us out of the dull wanderings of Nod.

Christ Jesus established for us the way to love and practice consistently the redemptive law of divine Life, Truth, and Love. Today, through the Science of Christ, we're able to experience the dynamic force for good described often in the New Testament in terms of the kingdom of God. And why shouldn't this eternal presence of good, God, heal and redeem us!

For example, the woman in the Bible story who was caught in the act of adultery was freed from fearful punishment through the redemptive action of the Christ, Truth, represented by Jesus. The Master's words to her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more," ^{John 8:11.} have inspired with hope countless prisoners of evil down the centuries and helped them escape some fearful land of Nod.

Christ, the voice of divine Truth, still comes to the sinning, suffering, disoriented thought of today and says: "Arise, listen to me, and change your ways. I reveal all true consciousness, I bring to light infinite and authentic power, indestructible substance, harmonious being."

To those threatened by some flood of evil, struggling to lift their heads above an ominous tide of pain or sin, there is no greater Comforter than the self-announcing, self-existent voice of Truth. Christ forever says to each of us, "God's law is operating here and now." Here is a fundamental message of Christian Science, and this is why many accept divine Science as their Comforter.

Recently, a woman found that by practicing the laws of God, she could avoid wandering in Nod, punished by unemployment, injustice, lack, poor health, loneliness, and thoughts of self-destruction. By clinging steadfastly to her actual likeness to Principle, she awoke from this dreamland of error to discover an abundance of good. As a result, her life, health, family situation, career opportunities, joy, and conscious worth substantially improved. She felt rescued from aimless and painful wanderings in a false, material sense of life, truth, intelligence, substance—the land of Nod.

The Christian metaphysician's daily task is to silence within his or her consciousness the mortally mental noise of negation, the denial of divine law. The thinker's task is to listen for the still, small voice of Truth. With persistent practice, then, we develop a skill in entertaining the angel vision that removes our fearful sense of that which is not.

How reassuring and satisfying it is for one to realize that the evidence of the material senses is false, not the reality of being. On the contrary, there is nothing unlovely in the kingdom of infinite Love, for Love and its creation is all; in the presence of Truth there is no spreading or entrenched error, for Truth is all; in the operation of Principle there is no malfunction or nonfunction, for Principle, in unity with its idea, is all there is. To be at one with God as His likeness is to be free of evil.

Not only can we defend ourselves by loving God's law, which shows good to be all there is; we can also pray effectively for the whole of mankind by knowing everyone is embraced and preserved in God's allness.

"God's law is in three words, 'I am All;' and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim of another law," writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. ^{No and Yes, p. 30.}

To the human being threatened with exile in some land of Nod, there is no greater recuperative energy than one's love of this law of God. It was love of divine law that enabled Jesus to free countless sick and sinful humans. Today, our love of this same law invokes the immediacy of God's tender, ever-present care and rescues us from an unnecessary trip into some land of disaster.