At every moment each individual is responding in some way to some kind of stimulus. Human consciousness is constantly faced with the challenge of yielding either to the impressions of good or to the suggestions of evil. Because of the belief that evil is power, mankind generally regard the outcome of this challenge as subject to chance more than to choice. Moreover, the complexities of modern living ofttimes lead men to believe that if there is a choice, it is difficult to make.

The Bible assures mankind that there is a choice between good and evil; and Christian Science, which is based upon Bible teachings, reveals a definite method by which to apply unerring divine law to the healing of all human ills. This law rules out chance with the certainty of God's supreme control. Christ Jesus, after his forty days of fasting in the wilderness, emphatically rejected the temptations of the devil, or evil, in words ringing with divine authority (Matt. 4:10), "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

Because Jesus knew that the same God-given dominion was available to all who accepted his teachings, he demanded of every follower the same incisive action in every situation in which evil attempted to dominate. And Mary Baker Eddy clearly proclaims that to respond rightly and wisely to God's demands is not only a possibility but also a rewarding obligation. She writes in "Unity of Good" (p. 60): "Mortals are free moral agents, to choose whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto them All-in-all."

We must have a correct view of being in order to conform human behavior to Truth. The Bible declares that God, Spirit, made all things and that He made man in His image and likeness. Therefore man reflects perfectly God's attributes and power, just as an image in a mirror is in complete accord with the original object in front of the mirror. The inseparable relationship of man and his divine Principle, God, is indicated in these words of Christ Jesus (John 5:19): "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."

The Master knew his real selfhood, the Christ, to be the Son of God; and he wrought his mighty healing works in accordance with the Scriptural pronouncement that God gave man dominion. Christian Science explains that this dominion is expressed by each individual in the degree that he understands the real man's spiritual sonship with God. As mankind thus learn to respond to the divine order of perfection, unreal material discords must disappear, together with the unreal material sense which cognizes them.

Having accepted this spiritual basis of right response, we must begin its demonstration. The practice of thinking more consistently in terms of spiritual perfection demands effort and is not attained at once. Although material sense will argue that it is much easier to continue in the accustomed way of material reasoning, this resistant state of mortal mind can and must be progressively overcome with humility and persistence. No matter how well we have disciplined thought and action, there is always need for improvement in our expression of the qualities characterizing right response. This was the most outstanding among many significant points unfolding to the writer from the following experience.

Taught from very early childhood the joy of living in strict accordance with the loving demands of God, as Christian Science explains them, she was perplexed when an illness of several months yielded only partially to her own prayerful work and to that of a Christian Science practitioner. The illness, never diagnosed, was a severe trial to the entire family.

One morning, in earnest longing to see her loved ones, who were caring for her, free from the responsibility of this problem, she recalled a statement which someone had made: "The only responsibility is one's response to God's ability." She asked herself: "What is right response? How can I better understand and use the infinite ability that is man's by reflection?" Almost at once there came to her thought this quotation from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy (pp. 307, 308): "Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: 'Adam, where art thou? Consciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?' "

She saw that to herself alone belonged the choice of a dwelling place for her thinking. From that moment, she frequently faced the challenging voice of Truth and found an indescribable joy in the constant effort to conform her thinking to the spiritual facts of being. The habit of listening for the voice of Truth and of practicing right response gradually brought to the writer release from being a responsibility, and to the family from having to assume it. The mental disquietude and physical discord were progressively replaced with harmony and useful activity.

Right listening precedes right response. The prophet Habakkuk clearly perceived this fact when he wrote (2:1), "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved." If honest searching of consciousness reveals that one is accepting the confusion of the sense dream as the reality of one's existence, then he may well listen to the stirring question which roused Elijah when, greatly discouraged, he was hiding in a cave (I Kings 19:9), "What doest thou here, Elijah?" One's right answer to this merited rebuke will be the courageous rising through prayer to a higher altitude of spiritual thought. One must then stay there until the still small voice of Truth becomes more real to him than the clamorous contradiction of the material senses.

It would appear that when one is called upon to take a firmer and higher spiritual stand, he is often assailed by the stormy protests of the carnal mind. This so-called mind creates its own false dream pictures and outlines the reaction to them. It claims the ability and authority to command humanity to respond to danger with fear, to hardship with bitterness, to pleasures of sense with indulgence, and so on. But its claims are powerless; its supposed existence an illusion. Our answer to every temptation to believe in the reality of the sense dream must be an authoritative rebuke in the manner of these words by Mrs. Eddy (Poems, p. 79):

We can hear God's call and experience His loving guidance even in the midst of seething trouble, prolonged discord, and intense mental or physical turmoil; and we are called upon to be very faithful in our response to the call of Truth. But no matter how loudly error screams, it can never make the slightest impression on God, the divine Mind, nor be heard by Mind's likeness, man. Our refuge lies in claiming divine Mind as the source of our being and power and in acting accordingly. This is our scientific standpoint from which to work out each problem and the process by which human thought is brought into conformity with divine law.

To respond rightly, then, is to agree with every statement of truth and to disagree with all opposite claims. This positive agreement demands far more, however, than a mere intellectual acceptance of spiritual facts. It requires a faith active enough ultimately to surmount all earth's shadows and storms and sound enough to reject deceptive earthly pleasures. If it is persistently practiced, right response becomes a habitual mental state, even a conscious abiding "in the living faith," where vigilance silences mortal suggestions before they become identified with one's own thinking. Evil in whatever form, materiality in its most attractive guise, can gain no response in a consciousness thus stabilized in Truth.