No, I am not about to recommend that we all go to law school and become attorneys. But what would you think of a lawyer, defending a client who he knows is innocent, who then deserts his defense when the opposing counsel's evidence seems to prove the client is guilty? Would you hire such a lawyer? I don't think so.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a lawyer on your own behalf, defending your own true, innocent selfhood, made in God's image, from evidence that tells you otherwise? Well, you are a lawyer, in a sense, in your own thinking. Limitations, injustices, ill health, fear, lack, are a few of the false accusations that humanity suffers from. But you can defend yourself from these accusations. Christian Science releases the sufferer by setting the record straight.

Christ Jesus knew that God is a loving Father and that God cares for His creation. He saw man as God's idea, spiritual, innocent, and pure. He healed sickness and deformity of all kinds on that perfect premise. He knew that evil is a lie and tells lies. It is on the basis of these facts of God's goodness and man's likeness to God that we can protest pain and symptoms and diagnoses of diseases. Mrs. Eddy says in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health: "When the body is supposed to say, 'I am sick,' never plead guilty. Since matter cannot talk, it must be mortal mind which speaks; therefore meet the intimation with a protest. If you say, 'I am sick,' you plead guilty" (p. 391).

Man is the infinite idea of God, infinite Mind. Because man is, in truth, governed by the law of God, man is not subject to physical laws of health or of nature. God, divine Love, is wholly and completely good. God never causes man to sin, to be sick, or to die. God, divine Love, doesn't test, tease, or tempt man. Sickness or inharmony of any kind can be healed, because Christian Science heals on the same basis that Christ Jesus did—perfect God, perfect man.

Say you feel a headache. You can reason out from God: Does God, infinite Spirit, have a headache? Of course not. God is incorporeal and so, then, you are incorporeal. Are you subject to periodic headaches? No. Why not? Because you reflect God, who is perfect Love. God is ever-present, always caring for you and others. God is Mind, supplying you with every idea you need today to accomplish whatever tasks need to be done.

This is only an abbreviated example of how you can reason when you are falsely accused of some physical illness. Science and Health contains a chapter, "Christian Science Practice," that has many good ideas to use in defending yourself from impositions of ill health with exact truths of God and man.

The false accuser is always mortal mind, a belief of a mind in matter that would oppose God's allness and goodness. Mortal mind claims to be your very own thought when you feel sick. When you affirm your innocence, you destroy mortal mind's argument. Sometimes we need to insist and persist. But because truth is true—God is the only cause, and you are God's perfect expression—the truth will be victorious.

In court, witnesses for the defense refute the charges leveled against the accused. We, too, can array our witnesses—the truths of our actual identity as God's idea—to defeat the false allegations brought against us.

This method has helped me many times. One morning when I needed to conduct a church service, I woke up with a bad cough.

I realized that as God's creation, I couldn't be ill. Since God, good, was the only cause, there was no cause for a cough. The thought of a cough was actually a false accusation, but the truth was that I was not guilty. That was the end of the problem.

So, be a lawyer on your own behalf. Don't accept false arguments about your own innocent, lovely, God-given selfhood. Whether they come as accusations of sickness or sin, you have the right to defend yourself and be free.