Mary Baker Eddy, on page 242 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," urges, "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death." This "solvent of Love" is sufficient to meet the always new forms of the old error, or animal magnetism.

Contemplating the tender might and the gracious effectiveness of divine Love, we see that hate and malpractice and war — all the evil beliefs of mortal mind, named animal magnetism — are powerless because godless. The total of evil is a lie, nothingness.

In the daily practice of Christian Science we know with certainty that the Love which is God utterly excludes every claim of an opposite evil power or presence. For the supreme value of Christian Science is its revelation of the fact that God is All, supreme, omnipotent, omniactive Love, and there is no opposite.

Therefore we have scientific grounds for handling or denying every suggestion and appearance of animal magnetism with authority and dominion. Again our Leader says (ibid ., p. 103), "The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they annihilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust."

Remembering that every appearance of evil is a false pretense, we are prepared by our understanding of the oneness of God, who is Love, to demonstrate the truth and see these false appearances fall into nothingness.

Handling error or animal magnetism means adequately denying every claim of an evil condition, such as sickness, sin, hate, war, malpractice, false propaganda, et cetera, and establishing in thought the opposite truth, that omnipotence, the one Mind, supreme Love, is All. We have not handled animal magnetism thoroughly if the evil still seems to be something to us. Our work is scientifically accomplished when nothing is acknowledged in thought as real, as having power or presence, but the one almighty, infinite Love.

The overcoming of Goliath strikingly illustrates the right handling of aggressive evil. It might be said that Goliath stands for the suggestion that materiality — physical force, material systems, organized evil — is power, is in fact invincible. Often the claims of material appearances will seem as mighty as Goliath affirmed himself to be. For this mesmeric claim of giant power frequently asserts its own invincibility, and seems to say, as it said to David, "I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field."

Evil declares that it can destroy anything that opposes it, and one is tempted to accept its aggressive suggestions as if they actually had power; as, for example, when it suggests that epidemics and world wars can disrupt and destroy. The claims of materiality to have power to rule might seem frightful if it were not for the invincible fact that nothing which is unlike God can have power.

David, relying wholly upon God, who had delivered him in previous dangers, approached the Philistine — presenting the appearance of the power of materiality — with the simplicity of absolute conviction of its powerlessness in the face of omnipotence. He declared, "The Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's."

The Goliath of materiality always claims to operate through the five material senses. To handle the lie of materiality adequately the truth must be applied; and where is Truth applied and operative but in scientific prayer or treatment? David's certainty of the power of God and the powerlessness of materiality was the prayer of faith in God which enabled him to resist the error, the belief of power in matter. And this rejection was so thorough and effective that the error was utterly demolished.

This lying claim of intelligence in matter then became the victim of its own weapons, its belief that the sword of matter and the shield of error could protect it.

How greatly today is needed this trust in Truth and Love, this Christly prayer, applied tenderly and universally to the false mesmeric claims, the inflamed beliefs of materiality at war with itself! This active, understanding prayer, based upon Truth, is the answer to the world situation today. For what is animal magnetism, expressed in tyranny and violence, but the giant of material force, the falsity of pretentious mortal mind, which claims it can master good. Yet all the time Love, and Love alone, is power and intelligence. Therefore, through Truth and Love we envisage the victory of the Christ-consciousness, enfolding all men everywhere in the Love which is God, and which utterly annihilates all evil.

In the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy it is written (p. 19), "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., is designed to be built on the Rock, Christ; even the understanding and demonstration of divine Truth, Life, and Love, healing and saving the world from sin and death; thus to reflect in some degree the Church Universal and Triumphant."

In the practice of Christian Science the Christ, Truth, so fills consciousness that "the universal solvent of Love" destroys the pretensions of evil, and God, the one divine power, is found to be supreme and All.

Copyright, 1943, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, One, Norway Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 11, 1918. Published every Saturday.