Many right-thinking persons have been slandered or seen a loved one so persecuted. If this happens to us, it may tempt us to be unhappy. However, Christ Jesus gave us the way to handle this situation. In his last beatitude he said: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." ^{Matt. 5:11, 12.}

The Bible tells us that Jesus himself was slandered, and he knew that every good worker is liable at times to be so mistreated. Lovingly sharing his rule for meeting the problem, he said, "Rejoice." Jesus knew that evil has no power to interfere with good. God's goodness and allness protect us from any malicious lies mortal mind tells about us.

It makes no difference how we may be verbally persecuted. We do not need to allow the mortal picture to sadden, irritate, or discourage us. Instead we can rejoice that the material dream is never true and cannot really harm or influence anyone. Just as God sustained the prophets and apostles when they were slandered and otherwise persecuted, so He is sustaining us in our experience.

In the above beatitude Jesus promised, "Great is your reward in heaven." Heaven is spiritual harmony. It is everywhere. Therefore it is to be enjoyed here and now, not in some distant place or time. And part of the reward for realizing this every-where-presence of heavenly harmony is the peace and joy, the complete mental victory over slander, that we can have right now.

Paul, as well as other early Christians, was subjected to slander and persecution. Yet he wrote the Corinthians, "I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation." ^{II Cor. 7:4.} We too can be "exceeding joyful" right in the midst of persecution.

Mrs. Eddy was often the target for troublemakers' lies. They thought that if they could make the public believe these lies, they could turn the people from her Church. But Mrs. Eddy obeyed the Master's beatitude regarding persecution and was spiritually the winner in every instance.

One of Mrs. Eddy's students gives this account of her, which shows how much our Leader valued a student's ability to laugh at persecution: "Mrs. Eddy related some of the efforts of evil against her, saying that there were those who were working to separate churches, break up the ranks; 'to separate from me,' she said, 'to break up my household.' As she said this her face was illumined with the Christ-spirit—her look and attitude declaring her dominion. The threats of evil and their boastfulness seemed so absurd, impossible, and impudent that I laughed. Instantly she said: 'If you take it that way, perhaps you could stand. Yes, you can—and having done all, stand.' " ^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 148 .}

Evil cannot tolerate being laughed at. It wants to be believed, feared, grieved over. We can laugh at it when we realize how ridiculous its false claims are. If someone should insist ten times two is sixty-three, we would laugh because it is so far from the truth. Nothing could be farther from spiritual truth than the errors of mortal mind. And when we become as knowledgeable about God's all-power and ever-presence as we are about arithmetic, we will be able to laugh at all of evil's powerless pretensions, including slander.

Our source of spiritual peace and joy is our seeing every individual—including the one who plays the role of a slanderer—as God has created him. God, divine Truth and Love, fills all space, and His infinite reflection, man, expresses only integrity and lovingkindness. While not closing our eyes to any threat to our well-being, we can know that actually no individual can be hypnotized into believing that man has ever expressed anything but Truth and Love, since God is All-in-all.

It is never the real man who offends us, Christian Science explains. It is always a mortal-mind belief, claiming to use a person as a channel to bring evil into our experience. Impersonalizing the source of the attack helps us to rise above it and remain untouched.

When the temptation comes to think that others may believe lies about us, we can rejoice that God is the only Mind; that as God's reflection, man can know only what God knows. However, we do need to watch our own words and actions in order to avoid even the appearance of evil so that we don't thoughtlessly invite criticism or slander.

It is such a comfort to be able to laugh at the whole presumptuous dream of persecution, deceit, and injustice. But even while laughing, we need to argue seriously the nothingness of their claim to be real. Hatred and malice are never sent by God. Since He is the only creator, these evils have no real existence. The only thing they can destroy is themselves. They can never injure God nor God's expression, spiritual man, our real selfhood.

Even humanly, hatred and malice lose their power to harm our right activity as we realize their nothingness and the fact that God impels all right activity and protects it. Holding such truths in consciousness, we find spiritual joy, which is our sure protection against mental malpractice.

Occasionally the spiritual understanding from which we derive true joy reveals to us certain steps we need to take in order to resolve a situation. But if our realization of the spiritual truth of the situation is clear enough and thorough enough, and is persistently maintained, such steps are often not needed.

Take courage if you seem to be facing persecution! These prophetic words of our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, refer to you as well as to all followers of the Christ: "The increasing necessity for relying on God to defend us against the subtler forms of evil, turns us more unreservedly to Him for help, and thus becomes a means of grace. If one lives rightly, every effort to hurt one will only help that one; for God will give the ability to overcome whatever tends to impede progress." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 115.}