Agreeing with the Adversary

W. Stuart Booth

Mrs. Eddy's writings are replete with strong and stirring instructions to students of Christian Science, which are designed to awaken their thought to spiritual realities whereby sin and sickness, inability and disability—all conditions of limitation and discord—may be seen aright as false beliefs, and thus disproved and displaced. In one such passage in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she counsels (p. 390): "When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine Science. Let your higher sense of justice destroy the false process of mortal opinions which you name law, and then you will not be confined to a sick-room nor laid upon a bed of suffering in payment of the last farthing, the last penalty demanded by error." Then, as she so frequently does, Mrs. Eddy quotes some words of Christ Jesus in verification: "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him." At first glance it might appear as if these words of our Master are not in accord with those of Science and Health, but careful consideration will show their perfect agreement. Mrs. Eddy further states (ibid.), "'Agree to disagree' with approaching symptoms of chronic or acute disease, whether it is cancer, consumption, or smallpox."

An important point in Christ Jesus' instruction is noted in the words, "whiles thou art in the way with him," the adversary. According to Scripture it is evident that Christ Jesus referred to Satan, the devil or evil, when he spoke of the adversary. And it should ever be remembered that our Master, in referring to the adversary, said, "There is no truth in him ... for he is a liar, and the father of it." To be in the way with the adversary, then, is to believe lies, to accept as true that which spiritual understanding reveals as false. For instance, in the textbook (pp. 161, 162) we read, "The physician agrees with his 'adversary quickly,' but upon different terms than does the metaphysician; for the matter-physician agrees with the disease, while the metaphysician agrees only with health and challenges disease."

Naturally, when people are thinking in the way with the adversary, that is, when they are accepting the testimony of the so-called material senses and thus are believing in sin, sickness, limitation, death, then they must perforce be in agreement with the adversary. Here is the root of humanity's troubles, the source of mankind's woes and worries, the cause of all fear, discord, disease, and death.

But the remedy is at hand in the spiritual revelation of God and His Christ made available in Christian Science. For the Science of right thinking—Christian Science—clearly points the way whereby we may have the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," as Paul admonished, and which inevitably leads us out of the way of thinking with the adversary. Christian Science shows that we do not have to accept as true anything which Christ Jesus would not believe. He, as the Way-shower, illustrated the right—the Christianly scientific—way of thinking, which is clearly pointed out by Christian Science. Considering both the works and the words of the master Christian it is undeniable that he based his thinking upon the spiritual fact that God, good, is the only Mind, the source of all true ideas. This led to his refutation of all claims of evil, discord, disease, and death.

The application of this demonstrable rule for right thinking to the everyday problems confronting mankind leads to the solution of these problems, whether they be manifested in one's business or one's body; for Christian Science both posits and proves that all conditions are primarily mental and are to be dealt with as such. The human body is the servant or expression of thought—even as all human business is the manifestation of thinking. If one finds himself thinking in the way with the adversary about himself and his business—accepting the beliefs that he lives in and because of matter, and that, perchance, both his body and his business are sick—the sensible and Christian course of action is for him to get out of that wrong way of thinking. This is the righteous remedy presented by Christ Jesus.

First, one must turn his thought to God, not for the purpose of gaining ease in matter, but to learn and live the truth, which ever makes men free from all error. One must not merely think about God by repeating, parrotlike, certain true spiritual statements, but one must learn to think consistently in harmony with Truth and Love, or divine Mind. This is having the Mind which was in Christ Jesus; and thus we "agree to disagree" with the adversary—with all error—and prove its nothingness.

W. Stuart Booth

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