In "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy we read (p. 85), "Temptation, that mist of mortal mind which seems to be matter and the environment of mortals, suggests pleasure and pain in matter; and, so long as this temptation lasts, the warfare is not ended and the mortal is not regenerated." Only when the so-called pleasures are of such a nature as to dim out good from conscious thinking do they decrease the activities of virtue and increase the likelihood of wrong tendencies. Eventually, if unopposed, they black out that which should be foremost, the radiant consciousness of purity and Life.

Intoxicating liquor is an unquestionable evil. Indulgence in liquor develops an increasing dependence upon material sense for morale and upon unwholesomeness for satisfaction.

Recently, however, liquor has been dignified with the label of "morale builder." Have you been deceived by the current propaganda proclaiming whisky the emancipator of inhibitions and a cocktail the liberator of the tongue? Perhaps, again, the propaganda covering your territory may have been of a more sympathetically persuasive type, endeavoring to entice you into drinking intoxicants that you might become oblivious to impending danger and fear of the future.

Students the world over are being re-educated by Christian Science and this re-education must perceptibly improve the standard of the world. To the extent that its precepts are applied, it is establishing joy on a spiritual, permanent basis. It is revealing God as the source of the right idea of all that finite sense calls feeling, emotion, sensitiveness; and whether these qualities are evidenced as pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow, Principle reverses the material sense testimony, rejecting and replacing all self-indulgence with the honesty, uprightness, winsomeness, and attraction of God, good. "God is good," writes our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, on page 63 of "Retrospection and Introspection"; and she concludes, "hence goodness is something, for it represents God, the Life of man. Its opposite, nothing, named evil, is nothing but a conspiracy against man's Life and goodness."

When the understanding is established that God, good, is Life, and that man reflects this substance, this somethingness of good, that which is degenerating, weak, and evil is seen to be nothing, for it has no spiritual foundation. Thus can the clear metaphysician penetrate the cloudiness of mortal mind called matter and environment; thus can he see temptation for what it is instead of what it seems to be. Finally, false pleasures are seen as camouflage, as powerless to cause mortals to bow down to the allurements of personal sense, comprising all the elements of nothingness.

Upon the soldiers' return from action, a bar is sometimes considered to be just the thing! A drink is ordered. Many find it does not satisfy. Suddenly, as some have said, there dawns the realization that it is not liquor but home they long for—home with its loved ones and peaceful surroundings. When they think of home, they unconsciously think of security. The hungry heart yearns for what Spirit alone can provide—man's satisfying habitation. The illusion that morale comes in bottles can never replace the security enjoyed by those whose mind is confidently stayed on God.

Absolute reliance on infinite good is the forerunner to real satisfaction. It is the promise and the fulfillment of conscious unity with the creator, and results in giving evidence in human experience of the normal, healthful attraction which holds men in God and good in men; and this, to the exclusion of any suggestion that animal magnetism can attract evil to them and separate them from rightful dominion. Adherence to God, who holds all things together in good, eventually exposes suffering in matter as the ultimate fruit of pleasure in matter, and demonstrates the nothingness of both by the counteracting attraction of spiritual good.

Satisfaction in material indulgence must be exposed and destroyed, giving way to the basic-need for cleanness of purpose and purity of desire. Thus there will come the consciousness of Life, not necessarily as previously envisaged, but with the clarification of reality born from actual experience in conquering the temptations of evil. The price paid is small in comparison with the genuine enjoyment which is the only security that life affords for dependable morale.

How can that security be procured and, once procured, how can it be established as a basis of morale? Obviously, security is based on spiritual-mindedness, which denies material sense, or what Paul calls the carnal mind. Amplifying this, he writes, "To be carnally minded is death: but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." There can be no relation between the artificial stimulus of liquor and the inspiration of right-mindedness. Spiritual-mindedness results in right living, not the spiritual oblivion which Paul called death. God's law is the law of Life. This law entails living with purity of purpose and purity in pleasure.

Copyright, 1944, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, One, Norway Street, Boston 15, 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.