Frequently the student of Christian Science finds the auxiliary verb "must" in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. "Must" means to "be obliged to (do)." Mrs. Eddy uses it to indicate what are the imperative and inescapable demands of divine law on each individual.

She says to each of us. "You must control evil thoughts in the first instance, or they will control you in the second" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 234). Here is a truth the individual has to accept and put into practice as a prerequisite to gaining enduring freedom from sickness, sin, and human discord. The requirement is also expressed in our Leader's imperative statement (ibid., p. 390), "Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought."

Persons become sick and sinful, critical and catty, they complain or nag, condemn, resent, hate, quarrel at home, at church meetings, or elsewhere because they do not control evil thoughts "in the first instance"—that is, when they first present themselves to their consciousness. Then these thoughts forthwith control them.

Sometimes an individual allows himself habitually, or periodically, to accept a role in error's tragedy. He consents to tolerate deep within his thought hidden sin—suppressed hate, resentment, jealousy, or revenge—which often ultimates in physical affliction. All this because he did not "control evil thoughts in the first instance."

Procrastination is of the devil. It is the thin edge of the devil's wedge. Individuals or races who indulge it pay heavily for doing so. For anyone to procrastinate when the demand is to control evil suggestion, and to put off doing so for a day, an hour, or a moment, is to disregard the mandate of Deity and erect a barrier to one's progress.

Christian Science teaches the individual that he has the God-given ability to control all evil thoughts immediately by destroying them. It makes him increasingly alert to the vital importance of doing so "in the first instance" before they control him. The provision on "Alertness to Duty" in the Church Manual by Mrs. Eddy (Art. VIII, Sect. 6) emphasizes this.

You and I can daily pray for, claim, and realize our natural alertness to the demand of God that each wrong thought, be it of oneself or of another, or of the world, be destroyed the instant it appears. This is done by our clinging more understandingly and constantly to the spiritual fact of the omnipresence, universality, and intactness of God's all-harmonious kingdom, wherein God's great family of individual ideas securely and eternally dwell.

Into the Mind of Christ—the God-given consciousness of man —evil thoughts cannot enter any more than shadows can make their way into the sunshine. We can claim as our own, every moment of every hour, the Christ-mindedness or spiritually enlightened consciousness with which God is eternally endowing us. We can, through systematic daily study and prayer, become so imbued with the spiritual idea of Life, and of creation and man as God's expression, that evil thoughts, if they appear, are reversed and destroyed by the radiance of spiritual reality within us.

If at times persistent effort over a period seems necessary to root out and annihilate some long-accepted lie of false selfhood, we can be sure that God supplies all the courage, persistence, and inspiration which we need to accomplish this worthy purpose. Man does not exist to be deceived and mesmerized by evil thoughts, however presented or personified. Man exists yesterday, today, and forever to manifest the Mind of Christ, the consciousness of Truth, and thereby to glorify his Maker, the only living God.

If some mortal has in times past been hurt by the words or acts of some other mortal, has failed to unsee and destroy this false picture presented by material sense, and has become fearful and resentful toward mortal number two, what can he do about it? Just this. He can challenge the whole godless lie of mortal mind which says there is a cause and creation other than God and His universe of right-minded ideas.

He can with his God-given spiritual sense see that there really has never existed anything but God, infinite Mind, and His kingdom, wherein all His children eternally live in that perfect concord, unity, and understanding which Mind ordains. He can realize that his individuality and the individuality of his brother have never been opposed to each other, have never been mortalized into contentious human personalities, because their individualities have ever been indispensable to the continuing intactness of God's manifestation.

He can ponder the Master's promise and affirmation, "Nothing shall by any means hurt you" (Luke 10:19), and realize that his identity has never been a hurt mortal, or his brother's identity a mortal doing hurt. With some sense of the allness of God and His manifestation he can refute all that mortal mind claims has taken place, and see that neither he nor his brother has actually had any part in evil's fantastic scene. Evil in its animated modes, he sees, is no more true than evil in its less active phases.

Although mortal number one did not control evil in the first instance and has suffered for his failure to do so, he can praise God, whose love and mercy never end, because he can even now regain his harmony. With his thought spiritually awakened, he can lay hold of the Christ-idea of God and man, prove his superiority over error's mythological tale of evil. He, like all of the rest of us, learns that out of experience progress comes.

With clear vision our Leader comforts us, "Tireless Being, patient of man's procrastination, affords him fresh opportunities every hour" (Christian Healing, p. 19). But to avoid the bitter fruits of procrastination and retarded progress, let us be more alert to "control evil thoughts in the first instance" through our understanding that there is in reality only God and His man.

Paul Stark Seeley