Safety and spirituality are related. In fact, according to Christian teaching, our safety is in proportion to our spirituality. The more truly spiritually-minded we are, the safer we are in our earthly experience.

Christ Jesus demonstrated that there is a divine law which establishes undeniably that the real, spiritual man is forever maintained in God's perfect image. No matter what disaster may seem to occur in human experience, this real man is invariably perfect in God's likeness. In order to profit from this divine law we have to be sufficiently spiritually-minded to discern it, acknowledge it as law in our own lives, and depend upon it. The Apostle Paul says, "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." ^{Rom. 8:6;}

The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, bears witness to this statement. It tells of the miraculous survival of people who trusted God, Spirit. Sometimes they emerged unscathed from situations that simultaneously proved fatal to others who had not the same spiritual understanding and faith in the one loving God, thereby proving that the condition of one's thought is of prime importance. Mrs. Eddy refers to several when she writes, "The divine Love, which made harmless the poisonous viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion, can heal the sick in every age and triumph over sin and death." ^{Science and Health, p. 243;}

Paul's safe encounter with the snake that came out of the wood fire on the island of Melita and fastened on his hand so impressed the local people, who evidently looked on the snake as lethal, that they thought he must be a god to have survived. ^{See Acts 28:3—6;} The three Hebrew men told of in the book of Daniel were unharmed when they were put in the fiery furnace. These followers of God emerged unscathed, but their unbelieving captors, who put them into the fire, were killed merely by coming near the heat of the flames. ^{See Dan. 3:19—27;} And Daniel was serenely safe in the presence of lions, although after he was removed from their den they attacked his false accusers and their families and "brake all their bones in pieces." ^6:24; All these were impressive proofs to onlookers that God, Spirit, can be relied upon to save those who trust Him.

Christian writers of the early centuries a.d tell us something of the trials endured with marvelous strength by spiritually-minded early Christians. It is to one such account—a tradition first mentioned at the beginning of the third century by the Latin Christian writer Tertullian—that Mrs. Eddy may be referring when she mentions deliverance from the boiling oil. The Apostle John before his exile to Patmos, Tertullian says, "when plunged into fiery oil suffered no harm." Some two centuries later the Christian scholar Jerome refers to this statement of Tertullian's with the added detail that the apostle, "put into a caldron of boiling oil, came out more pure and active than he went in."

Mrs. Eddy was convinced of the eternal presence of the same power of divine Love's law that preserved these earlier worshipers of God. She had proved it often in her own life. Her explanation of Christian Science, God's perpetual harmony, shows how, by spiritualizing our thought, we can always be safe when threatened with danger in present-day social, business, public, and personal life.

Sometimes it may seem that malice, hatred, envy, revenge, are fastening upon us, attempting to cripple or even destroy our ability to act on behalf of progress, justice, and mercy, or to poison our relationships with others. We may find ourselves in "the hot seat" of controversy, or seemingly in the grip of physical fear or fever. Or we may feel menaced by dire predictions of failure, infection, disease, or death. But Mrs. Eddy writes: "Immortal man, in God's likeness, is safe in divine Science. Mortal man is saved on this divine Principle, if he will only avail himself of the efficacy of Truth, and recognize his Saviour." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 89-90.}

We are saved from mortal danger of every kind by the great, scientific fact of God's, good's, allness and His law of harmony governing the universe and man. The only truth of being is God and His idea. This Christly understanding of divine Life and its perfect spiritual expression—the understanding of infinite Love and the certainty that every object of creation truly reflects the qualities of Love—is the infallible power that uproots and obliterates any appearance or thought of danger or discord.

This power of Christ is always available in moments of sudden peril. Its action is instant. When we unreservedly accept into consciousness the truth of God's law of omnipresent good, it automatically erases false thoughts of evil. Thereby our problems are resolved, since false thoughts are the only supposed substance of discordant outward conditions. When these are destroyed, harmony must be reestablished in human experience.

But why wait for false thoughts to be manifested in humanly dangerous conditions before dealing with them? We are wise before instead of after an event, if we establish in our consciousness first thing each day—and many times each day—that God's law of harmony is ever operative and supreme. As we come to understand this divine law, our safety will always be assured.

Naomi Price