The practitioner's telephone rang. It was six o'clock in the morning. A young woman was acutely ill. And—this was her wedding day!

Was this a disaster in the making? Not at all. On the contrary, it was seen and seized as an opportunity to prove the glorious truth that "the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword." ^{Heb. 4:12;} The Christian Science practitioner said with great conviction, "This illness is not in the script, and you and I are going to stick to the script."

Just what did this remark mean? How did it apply to the emergency? We all recognize that a character in a play exists in the mind of the author who creates and writes the script. It might be Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Disney's "Mickey Mouse." The point is that the character is a creation of its author. Nothing can be the experience of the individual character aside from the conceptions of the author.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "Those instructed in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is the only author of man." ^{Science and Health, p. 29;} Reasoning and praying along this line, the practitioner affirmed that any intrusion of a foreign element or agent into man's experience is ruled out by God's authorship of man. It just isn't in the script. God, divine Mind, infinite Spirit, conceives man as idea. Man, this true idea, reflects, mirrors forth or expresses, the nature of his creator. This is in total agreement with the words of Christ Jesus: "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." ^{Matt. 23:9;}

Christian Science maintains that God is our Father-Mother, divine Love, the creator, or source, of all being. This one supreme cause, eternal Mind, is expressed in infinite ideas uncontaminated by and immune to the destructive fears and contradictions that would infiltrate one's consciousness, and thus one's experience. Claiming to be one's own thinking, they are denials of truth attempting to parade as our own thoughts.

When illness or other forms of inharmony threaten, push, attack, insist, what should we do? Submit to them, cooperate with them, indulge them, or consent to them? Emphatically No! The Scriptures counsel, "If sinners entice thee, consent thou not." ^{Prov. 1:10;} We can take possession of our thinking. We can refuse to admit the marauders, the destructive thoughts. We can firmly shut our mental door against them, knowing that a lie is powerless in the presence of the truth, the truth that "God is the only author of man."

Any situation or circumstance contrary to the nature of God, omnipresent and omnipotent good, is thoroughly disposed of when we accept and rejoice in the healing truth that "the ungodly are...like the chaff which the wind driveth away." ^{Ps. 1:4.} The fact of the matter is very simple—if it isn't good, Godlike, it has no actual being.

Of course, ungodly beliefs come to all of us knocking for admission—fear, envy, hate, resentment, belief in the existence of matter. These are only a few of what the Bible calls "imaginations" of the heart. They are a procession of lies. But we are free agents and can control our individual consciousness. We have divinely bestowed dominion, as the Bible points out in the first chapter of Genesis. We can decide whether or not to admit and nourish these impostors as part of our experience. We can vigorously and vehemently dismiss them as suggestions of the carnal mind attempting to delude and frighten us. We can prove our dominion.

That is exactly what took place that early morning. Man's spiritual identity was clearly recognized as the pure selfhood of the young woman. As an individual reflection of infinite Mind she was safe and well, not open to sudden attacks from a spurious mythical enemy called mortal mind.

As she and the practitioner held to these truths, sticking to the script, recognizing and realizing the truth that "God is the only author of man" and the source of all good, healing followed, and quickly. At a noon wedding that day, a healthy, happy, radiant bride walked down the aisle!