We know that in Christian Science there is a light for every dark place, a positive spiritual idea for every negative suggestion, and a scientific affirmation for every vapid denial, and these essential truths may be discerned through spiritual sense In pointing out something evil that we should not indulge, each of the Ten Commandments reveals by implication something good that we should love and do.

The eighth commandment (Ex. 20:15), "Thou shalt not steal," is more than a rigid barrier against theft. Keeping this commandment brings to light the abundance of divine good, the blessedness of giving, the joy of service, the justice of honesty. For every suppositional evil there is infinite good with which to overthrow the supposition. But to find the good that is God we must reverse the error.

It has been said that the only truth about a lie is the truth the lie is about. This is more than a clever arrangement of words. When you find the truth concerning the lie, you have reversed evil, and it is gone. In divine Science, good is never reversed, though it may seem to be. Such seeming is but the falsity of mortal mind, claiming reality and power to befool the unwary. An alert Christian Scientist will never allow himself to be fooled by error, but will instead reverse it, knowing that evil must always be reversed when Science is applied to the problem.

Paul, who before his conversion to Christianity persecuted the Christians, must have recognized that by putting the Christians in chains, he had been stealing away his own native freedom. Perhaps Paul also discovered that because he had not acknowledged an individual's inherent right to worship according to the dictates of his heart, he had been made blind to his own freedom.

In humility Paul discovered that neither he nor any human could steal away anything belonging to the man of God's creating, who is spiritual and not material. He wrote (Rom. 8:38, 39), "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus."

The attempt to steal a quality of divine Mind must of necessity end in frustration, since Mind is one and cannot be divided or separated in any way from any of its qualities. Thus one's inherent trust in good, one's understanding of the unreality and powerlessness of matter, and one's spiritual conviction that Spirit alone is real are beyond the hands of the thief or the mental trespasser. For one to rob another of his fair reputation and good name by bearing false witness against him, through gossip, anger, or self-justification, is to break God's law as certainly as the midnight burglar breaks the law of the state.

Thus the eighth commandment is to the Christian Scientist, as well as to all others who read the inspired Word of the Bible, a great deal more than a law against the theft of material things. It reminds us that we should never in our thought or speech attempt to take anything from our brother that God has given him.

Recognizing that every student of Christian Science must demonstrate this desideratum, Mary Baker Eddy points to the abundance of good to be shared mentally and spiritually by all. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 518): "The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good. Love giveth to the least spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all as the blossom shines through the bud."

"The rich in spirit" have no need to steal from another; for they already reflect good, and the suggestion to purloin from another would never occur to them! Christ Jesus in all his dealings with mankind reversed the suggestions of theft in all its phases. On many occasions he restored to men their spiritual estate of right activity, wholeness, purity, sanity, and health. He never accepted for a moment the false picture of a man robbed of anything God had given His children!

Jesus is the master Christian, and the Christ, which he so bountifully demonstrated and so beautifully portrayed, is here today in all its power and beauty to be demonstrated by all who seek it with their whole heart and an honest purpose. It is the Christ, Truth, that enables each one to overcome sensuousness and sin, sickness and fear, resentment and greed, and to demonstrate the eighth commandment in its fullest import.