Angels,  Christian Science explains, are not mysterious, winged material creatures. They are God's messages of enlightenment, courage, hope, and comfort—God's thoughts native to the consciousness of man. Their number is limitless. There are legions and legions. The angels have, under God's law, different offices to perform. One such is to impart a sense of spiritual strength to men. Bible writers have named this angelic spiritual quality Michael. Christian Scientists find it vitally important to their progress Godward daily to recognize and entertain this courage-strengthening messenger of Truth.

John saw that while in spiritual reality heaven is omnipresent, there is to material sense a terrific conflict between evil and good, and that in it the angel Michael has a most important part. Says John, "There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels" (Rev. 12:7).

Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 566): "The Old Testament assigns to the angels, God's divine messages, different offices. Michael's characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan, and fights the holy wars."

This fight between Michael and the dragon is not some far-off event. It is not a conflict that is going to take place somewhere outside your experience and mine. Heaven is the harmony of true being. It is, as Christ Jesus taught, "at hand," and "within you." But to find it each individual must entertain—be conscious of— the angel Michael, or spiritual strength, and use this God-provided quality of Mind to drive out of thought the dragon, or the totality of evil, and its devilish suggestions that would deny the presence of God, His heaven, and His man.

Let us realize that the Michael of spiritual strength is ever present in our individual God-given consciousness. We can be so conscious of our God-strengthened self-hood that we can prove that the dragon and his angels of evil suggestions cannot prevail against the strength of God, which is ever ours to deliver us from evil.

The saying that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" will be said no more when men learn that every truly good intention, every sincere desire to do right, is fortified by God, its source, with His own invincible, undefeatable spiritual strength. Here is the answer to the lie which besets so many mortals. They have worthy intentions. They wish to overcome false appetite, animality, dishonest tendencies, and bad habits of many kinds. They are resolved to master chronic or acute diseases. But they often seem unable to bring their desires to fruition. Their honest intentions are not enough to master the dragon and his angels.

The overcoming of evil is not a matter of merely having a right desire and adding to it personal effort to put it into effect. The overcoming of evil is a God-ordered activity, and can be accomplished only with the moral and spiritual strength with which omnipotent Mind is eternally endowing its representative, man.

The progress of a student of Christian Science is sometimes retarded because he does not courageously face the error that says it has a leechlike hold on his thought, and claim as his own the spiritual strength with which God endows him, refusing to believe that this lie is his nature, life, or selfhood. He must realize that God, omnipotent, omniactive good, is his only Mind and Life, and always has been. He must realize the spiritual fact that God is working in him, enlightening, inspiring, and strengthening him with divine strength sufficient to reverse, silence, and annihilate the misconception of selfhood which material sense would mesmerize him into believing is his individuality.

How persistently mortal mind whispers to us that we fall far short of our ideals; that we are of little account; that in spite of our desire to do right we seem weak before the aggressive lies of evil. The surge of error in its various forms, among them the false attraction of liquor, tobacco, sensuality, bad temper, deceitfulness, seems too much for us to thwart and overcome with our meager understanding of God and man. But when we begin really to see that the battle is not ours, but God's, courage mounts. It is His will and His law that man's complete superiority to evil be demonstrated. It is the Father, our Ego, that is every instant everywhere, no matter what material sense may say is the environment or circumstance, that worketh in us with His angel legions, Michael and his hosts, to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Man never has lacked and never will lack spiritual strength and consciousness of his dominion. They are inseparable from him as the reflection of God. No phase of repetitious evil suggestion can affect them. They are yours and mine, given to us of God to ensure our moral and spiritual invincibility and continuing godliness. Man clothed with spiritual strength is immovable from the paths of rectitude. Conscious in some degree of this spiritual strength of man, the student realizes the impotence of any form of evil to beat down his defense or to undermine his divine sonship, no matter how often to human sense some phase of evil may have claimed to do so.

Mortal mind may say the past is full of recurring mistakes, but the Christ-idea of God and man reveals that no human past can encroach upon the eternal intactness of God's universal kingdom or affix itself to the man of God's making. Each day is a new opportunity to entertain more appreciatively the angel Michael of spiritual strength, to realize more clearly the undefeatableness of our God-caused and God-strengthened being, and to prove that thus endowed we can neither be deluded by evil into willing concurrence nor be overcome by it through human weakness. What God commands us to be, God enables us to be. Because God is ever expressed by man, God's strength is ever individualized in man. Thus God ever ensures man's moral and spiritual integrity.

Daniel entertained the angel Michael, who brought to him this message from God: "O man greatly beloved, fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong." Then said Daniel, "And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened" (Daniel 10:19). Let us open the door of our hearts and continually entertain the angel Michael. Let us hear him say with the voice of God, "O man greatly beloved .... be strong, yea, be strong."

Paul Stark Seeley