When someone becomes angry, the modern rejoinder is, Cool it!

However, under intense provocation this isn't always easy. Thought may be ablaze, and self-control about to go out the window. What do we do?

If we are students of Christian Science, and in the heat of the moment have temporarily lost sight of its teachings, we need to pull ourselves up short and vigorously reject the sensation of anger as a mesmeric illusion. We should remember that spiritual man is the reflected image of God, the infinitely loving divine Mind, and because of this our real selfhood has no consciousness or will apart from this Mind.

These scientific facts, when realized and clung to, constitute a potent prayer that can silence sudden anger, calm and cool our thought, and bring it into line with divine Love.

But if anger comes to thought quickly and often, if our composure is easily disturbed, then we will need to learn more fully how to keep thought calm, cool, loving, restfully still, by becoming more God-conscious. Dispositions are improved as we learn to dwell in the presence of God—in the tranquil stillness of divine Mind's all-encompassing love. In a song of trust to God, the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." ^{Isa. 26:3;}

Christian Science reveals the destructive effect of anger—a phase of hatred—on health and happiness. Mrs. Eddy has made the immensely important discovery that disease, although it appears to be a physically located disorder, is really a mental phenomenon, the externalized expression of discordant human thought.

Smoldering hatred, impatience, and resentment that often intensify into open anger must be destroyed at all costs if we are to maintain our health and strength. Mrs. Eddy warns, "Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last." And she adds this helpful counsel: "If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 12;}

As we grow in our understanding of Christian Science, we learn that what seems to be another material personality is really a counterfeit of man's true identity. What evil this counterfeit appears to do then impresses us less. We are not annoyed or angered to the same extent by the antics of a mortal, because we are learning to look beyond material sense testimony to the reality of man in the likeness of divine Love. We are learning to love scientifically, to behold the perfection of true selfhood and its inseparable oneness, or unity, with creative Mind.

Divine Love manifests vital energy because it is Life and Mind. Love is the Soul of man and sustains him with buoyancy and gladness. When understood, it destroys aggressive self-will, combativeness, explosive temper, with the healing qualities of humility, stillness, patience, gentleness. Keeping alive a conscious awareness of our unity with the Life that is Love, we gain an inner tranquillity that resists emotional storms.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "O glorious hope! there remaineth a rest for the righteous, a rest in Christ, a peace in Love. The thought of it stills complaint; the heaving surf of life's troubled sea foams itself away, and underneath is a deep-settled calm." And earlier in the same paragraph she tells us, "Meekness is the armor of a Christian, his shield and his buckler." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 19;}

In his Sermon on the Mount, Christ Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth," ^{Matt. 5:5;} and he lived the spirit of his words better than anyone else. When faced with malignant opposition, he often rebuked his persecutors, but remained calm and undisturbed. Jesus impersonalized the hatred that confronted him, seeing it as a counterfeit of man's real identity. Therefore he was not tempted to retaliate in kind.

Centuries before the Christian era it was said of Moses, the great Hebrew leader, that he "was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." ^{Num. 12:3;} When he was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses caught a glimpse of God's infinite nature as the great I am, the governing Principle of man's being. This revelation humbled him. It must have helped him to destroy the uncontrolled temper that earlier had impelled him to kill an Egyptian whom he saw abusing one of his people.

It is clear, then, that he who would gain the spiritual power that results in a mastery of human emotions must first humble himself before God, Mind, recognizing His infinite allness and complete control of man. Mrs. Eddy summarizes it succinctly: "The Latin omni, which signifies all, used as an English prefix to the words potence, presence, science, signifies all-power, all-presence, all-science. Use these words to define God, and nothing is left to consciousness but Love, without beginning and without end, even the forever I AM, and All, than which there is naught else." ^{'02, p. 7 .}

Alan A. Aylwin