Christ Jesus once warned, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." He went on to say, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." ^{Matt. 7:15;} Metaphysically considered, could not wolves in sheep's clothing refer, not to men, but to the five material senses that are part of the human self?

This may seem to be a startling conclusion to people who have always accepted the senses without question. But it is through these senses that people cognize matter and mortal existence, and it is in them that all sin, sickness, and death appear to take place. The intensity of evil to which these "wolves" often descend is shocking to true followers of Jesus, who master the senses and hold them in subjection to God, good. Christian Science declares that eventually the false senses must be abandoned by everyone and life be spiritually defined apart from them.

Christian Science shows that no one need let the physical senses claim him as their own or beguile him into doing the will of evil either to express sickness or to yield to sin. This metaphysical Science reveals the way to silence the senses and in this way help mankind escape the degradation or the suffering that inevitably follows submission to their demands.

In the first place, Christian Science makes a clear distinction between the material senses and the spiritual senses, through which mankind discern the invisible God, Spirit, and His qualities and ideas. Then Science teaches that the material senses are counterfeits of the spiritual senses and points out that on this account they are not to be trusted. Senses that promise pleasant sensations and often produce them but that also produce such things as deformity, blindness, violence, pain, and death are not reliable. They are false prophets, infinitely apart from the man God makes in His image, and only to themselves seem to have existence.

It is obvious that to the five senses God does not even exist. To them His qualities of love and justice, purity, peace, intelligence, and mercy are unknown. These elements of God's man cannot be seen or heard or cognized by any of the five senses. Spirit and its creation are apparent only to the spiritual senses that God bestows upon every one of His offspring. When these true senses are appreciated and exercised, they give one the strength to prevent the physical senses from expressing their cold, hard, cruel nature. All evil is a form of sense excitement, and the ability to silence the material senses by demonstrating spiritual consciousness is something that every student of Christian Science must develop.

Hatred, fear, lust, revenge, intoxication, all speak of sense excitement, and if these godless states of mind are not exterminated by true consciousness, they fester mentally and react poisonously upon their perpetrators. Such subduing calls for personal regeneration that cleanses the senses and silences their destructive intentions. Jesus was referring to this cleansing when he said to his disciples, "Ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." ^{19:28 ;}

When Mary Baker Eddy was asked of this passage, "What is meant by regeneration?" part of her reply was, "It is the appearing of divine law to human understanding; the spiritualization that comes from spiritual sense in contradistinction to the testimony of the so-called material senses." A little farther on she adds, "This newborn sense subdues not only the false sense of generation, but the human will, and the unnatural enmity of mortal man toward God." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 73, 74;}

Human will motivates and excites the physical senses and impels thoughtless people into wrong habits and even into acts of violence. But the divine will is now clearly revealed by Christian Science as the only will; and when this truth is demonstrated, it stops the lawless action of the false will of mortals and prevents people from disobeying divine law.

Something is always motivating men, always causing them to act. Their deeds will tell whether this something is God, divine Mind, or the mortal, material mind. Can there be any advantage in resisting the will of good, God, and playing into the hands of the false senses whence originate all forms of destruction: destruction of character, of conscience, of health, of self-respect, of possessions, of life itself?

The cure for any willful impulse to behave dishonestly, sensually, or idiotically is the truth which needs to be humbly and firmly stated: that man is God's likeness, that his senses are spiritual, that his experiences are the fruits of these gentle senses, which are ever present to reveal Mind's law-motivated, perfect man.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mrs. Eddy says, "Christian Science reveals Truth and Love as the motive-powers of man." ^{Science and Health, p. 490.} The more scientifically the victim of sense excitement applies this truth of motivation to his mental states, and the less emotionally he approaches his problems, the more effectively will he subordinate his life to God's will. Then he will find himself free from the tyranny of the wolves in sheep's clothing. He will feel the power of divinity working in him. He will be perpetually informed by the spiritual senses of his sense-free life in God.

Helen Wood Bauman