Protection

Ella W. Hoag

The thought of protection always implies security and safety; it means preservation from difficulty, a guarding from harm. A sense of enmity and danger has ever been connected therewith; for without an enemy or the possibility of injury, what need would there be for protection?

From the beginning of mortal history men have sought protection. Starting with the belief that man has a separate existence from God, good, and that he is therefore at the mercy of evil, mankind has always recognized the need of protection from evil. Imagining largely that their enemies were from without, men have attempted to defend themselves by erecting around themselves bulwarks and barricades. When they have found these powerless to protect, then they have turned to God, hoping that in some mysterious, unexplained way He would save them.

Religionists have preached loudly of God as the supreme protector; but have they understood just what His protection includes, or how to claim it? Have they known what constitutes an enemy? The fact that multitudes of Christian people who have believed they have trusted implicitly in God have at the same time believed they could be overcome by all sorts of dilemmas and distresses, would indicate a lack of understanding of how to trust God, as well as a failure to see clearly from what they were to be protected.

Christian Science, in its illuminating revelation of the mental nature of all things, teaches with Paul that it is the so-called carnal or mortal mind that constitutes the enemy. In his epistle to the Romans Paul wrote, "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Christian Science also shows as a logical sequence that the way of protection from this enemy is to learn to understand the all-presence and all-power of God, divine Mind, and to demonstrate man's inviolable relationship therewith. In other words, it places the whole subject of protection in divine Mind, explaining that wrong, evil thoughts express the enemy, while right, good thoughts are ever the divine means of protection.

All true work in Christian Science, then, tends towards protection. Every true thought held, every wrong thought denied, is aiding in the destruction of the beliefs of evil as having entity or power, and therefore is helping to bring about that perfect sense of protection which may be found only in the understanding that God, divine Mind, is the alone real. It were well for us to remember that we are not truly dwelling with right thoughts unless we are realizing that they are always God working in us. Man is not the originator of a right thought: God alone is origin. Therefore no right thought ever existed anywhere but in divine Mind. There it originated, and there it always must remain; there it is always actively doing the will of God, who conceived and governs it; there God is always causing it to be expressed in man. When one becomes conscious of a true thought he may, yes must, always, always know that it is given of God and therefore has God's power with it to prove its own reality, to maintain its own identity, to bring forth to human consciousness here and now its own glowing fruitage of holiness, health, harmony. This is not only to become conscious of one's own present security in good thinking, but it must also advance the recognition of the infinite power and protection—the allness—of divine Mind.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 115) Mrs. Eddy writers: "Your means of protection and defense from sin are, constant watchfulness and prayer that you enter not into temptation and are delivered from every claim of evil, till you intelligently know and demonstrate, in Science, that evil has neither prestige, power, nor existence, since God, good, is All-in-all." This, then, is what we as Christian Scientists are always endeavoring to accomplish. This is the protection we are always striving to demonstrate. We must therefore press on to those spiritually mental heights of which our Leader speaks (ibid., p. 10), when, in amplifying the subject of protection from all enemies, she says, "Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality), and this one enemy is yourself—your erroneous belief that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but good exists in Science."

Ella W. Hoag

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