Some people thoroughly enjoy driving a well-designed, stable car along a finely engineered highway; they have a nice feeling of control. Contrasting with this is the uneasiness if we hit a patch of ice and feel the car break away, momentarily out of control.

It's reassuring to remember in any kind of slippery situation that all that genuinely exists, all that is real, is under the perfect control of God. Nothing is outside that control. And we can demonstrate divine control whenever we need to by affirming the truth of being and by bringing our living under the direction of Deity. "Mind's control over the universe, including man," Mary Baker Eddy tells us, "is no longer an open question, but is demonstrable Science." ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 171;}

Demonstrating Mind's control more consistently involves turning away from matter and to Mind as regularly as we can. It involves making a mental U-turn, reversing any drift toward matter and facing Spirit and its allness. And, goodness knows, there is tremendous need and opportunity in offices, homes, and in society at large, for more evidence of the control of immortal intelligence.

We will be less menaced by things "out of control" the more we concede there is nothing external to divine Mind and its orderly action. In scientific actuality, divine Mind with all that it expresses makes up the whole package of being; all that truly exists is Mind and its ideas. As spiritual understanding flowers, we find ourselves faced less often with things that seem to be out of intelligent control, and should such situations come along, we handle them more effectively.

Industrial disputes causing inconvenience and perhaps widespread public suffering evidence the unhandled claim that we live in a world where some pockets of existence are outside the government of Mind. Take a postal strike as an example. We should and can help to bring a resolution through understanding acknowledgments of the truth of being. First, the U-turn. We must look away from the material factors in the situation. Through cultivating a certainty of the government of Mind we can be less distracted by the case's political rights or wrongs, by worries over clashing ideologies, or by economic or salary or class injustices that may seem to be elements of the human picture. These may be conditions that need healing. But if we are to help spiritually, then we must turn to Mind and reason from the infinite spiritual reality of Mind.

Destructive industrial conflicts urge us to acknowledge Mind's control over the whole universe and its every facet and element. All discord is an outward form of the mortal belief that the universe is not God-created. It expresses the claim that the universe is physical, populated by disputatious mortals—that Mind is not God, not one, not universal, but is broken down into frustrated personal consciousnesses. Mrs. Eddy exposes this claim: "Science shows that a plurality of minds, or intelligent matter, signifies more than one God, and thus prevents the demonstration that the healing Christ, Truth, gave and gives in proof of the omnipotence of one divine, infinite Principle." ^{Christian Science versus Pantheism, p. 7;}

The only Mind of man is the divine Mind. And this Mind is not mortally opinionated. It is infinitely and impersonally intelligent. Absolutely speaking, that one divine Mind, or Principle, is all that is operating and governing throughout the entire universe. Man with all that relates to man is under the government of Principle.

There is every reassurance in knowing all things are actually being intelligently and efficiently directed. Mind controls all because Mind is All. It is self-governing, and being infinitely intelligent, Mind is infallible in its self-government. And governing itself ideally, Mind controls its image, man and the whole spiritual cosmos.

Mortal mind (empty, false consciousness arguing that it is the only consciousness) claims to govern the body. It will seem to do so if we let it. We don't have to and we shouldn't. Mortal mind is, in a sense, always under the control of immortal Mind, for this Mind's infinitude never let the so-called mortal mind come into being. Disease and illness represent unhandled, unnegated claims that mortal thought has power and can influence the body.

A disease can never be beyond control, because it can never be outside the healing effect of our acknowledging Truth's infallible control of error. Our real self can never be pushed around or bullied by mortal beliefs, because it exists forever in the perfectly governed realm of immortal Spirit.

Of Christ Jesus, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The power of his transcendent goodness is manifest in the control it gave him over the qualities opposed to Spirit which mortals name matter." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 199;} This is a marvelous explanation of how Jesus was able to do the good that he did. As the Bible shows, his goodness subordinated the claims of matter. He said, "I have overcome the world." ^{John 16:33.} He was never the servant or slave of material conditions but their master. We can be his followers in this.

The importance and utility of understanding Mind's control over all being should be apparent. Mind indeed does control all that actually exists. Knowing this, we avoid the ice patch and the oil slick of mortal belief, which argue that things are out of control.

Geoffrey J. Barratt