A Perpetual Challenge
Samuel Greenwood
The wisdom of safeguarding one's mentality, of excluding from it whatever would defile, is apparent from the fact that to the extent one is thinking good he is immune from evil. Watchfulness in having only good in one's thoughts is, therefore, a matter of downright common sense, of practical self-preservation, rather than of sentimental religious duty. It is a work in which all mankind are intimately and individually concerned, inasmuch as every human being has before him the goal of abiding satisfaction, happiness, peace, but which, as he knows in his heart, cannot in the very nature of things be found at the end of any evil course. Hence the Master's command, "Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation," — lest we be tempted to believe that aught but good is worth while, even on earth.
Mrs. Eddy writes, in The Christian Science Journal of April, 1904, "Our thoughts beget our actions; they make us what we are." [My 203:15-16] What we think, then, is the most important thing concerning us, and the one thing which calls for unceasing attention if we would be what we aspire to be. The mental state must be guarded as faithfully, and its approaches sentineled as carefully, as camp or fortress in time of war, if we would preserve consciousness from the besetments of an evil sense. Every moment, whether he is consciously thinking of it or not, each mortal is mentally agreeing or disagreeing with the belief in a power, cause, and intelligence besides God, and is aligning himself either with the infinity of good or with the suppositional existence and activities of evil; and he needs to be vigorously wakeful to the omnipresence and omnipotence of God to be the best he is capable of being.
It is evident, from his teaching, that Jesus attached equal importance to watchfulness as to prayer; hence, ceaseless prayer to be effective should be accompanied by ceaseless watching. The desire for good, which is the essence of prayer, should never be absent; but to be fruitful, this desire must be seconded by the vigilance which allows nothing unworthy to enter or control the thought. The Master said that if "the goodman of the house" had been aware of the danger "he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through;" and so would we. Christians not only need to pray, but to watch that their prayers are put into practice. If our supreme desire is to be good, we shall so strive for its fulfilment that no opportunity to bring it to pass will be disregarded. Without unceasing watchfulness against the insidious encroachments of evil, one's efforts were useless; since to be good always, under all circumstances, calls for constant realization of the supremacy of God, good, and the consequent powerlessness of evil.
But, it may be asked, how can one keep unbroken watch, and preserve thought from the entanglements of a belief in matter, while participating in the routine of human material affairs? To be sure, a constant verbal denial of evil and affirmation of the allness of God may not be practicable, nor is such a course necessary to ensure the practice of righteousness. It is however evident that Jesus, also Paul, saw the necessity for being on guard constantly, and that "the whole armour of God" is required in order "to stand against the wiles of the devil." The admission of the claim of evil by mortals is not couched in so many words, nor is it a distinct or intentional mental act, so much as it is the involuntary impulse of belief, which operates continuously while the belief in evil remains. In like manner, the settled assurance and conviction of the omnipotence of God, permeating the consciousness, registers instant protest against every suggestion of evil as it appears on the individual's horizon. We reach this mental preparedness as we approximate the Christ-mind, whose normal and natural state of thought is the knowledge of man's eternal unity with God.
In "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 9), Mrs. Eddy writes: "The thoughts of the practitioner should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; that He is All, and that there can be none beside Him;" also, in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 155), she admonishes us not to forget the divine allness "for a moment." It can be seen that this state of thought would preclude any admission of evil, for though we may not at present be fully conscious of God's omnipotence and omnipresence, we can always remember it, and this remembrance will be a perpetual challenge to the supposition of aught beside Him. We know by experience that wrong thoughts do not enter our mental precincts while we remember that good is the only intelligence, nor can hate or malice creep into consciousness while we remember that Love is infinite. And so on through all of evil's suppositional activities; they could not slip in unperceived and unchallenged if we remained awake to the spiritual reality of being wherein man is forever the likeness of God. Our thought-sentinels go to sleep only when we forget; hence to watch is to remember.
A sentinel who neglects his watch is not more fearless but more careless, and less appreciative of the subtlety of his foe, than one who is wider awake to the import of his work. A watchman asleep expresses a false sense of security, a baseless belief of harmony, and he may awake at any moment to find the enemy in possession of the field. A similar danger exists for the student of Christian Science who allows himself to be lulled into a sense of peace and safety on the strength of material evidence, and forgets the ceaseless animosity of the "carnal mind" toward the spiritual idea. To keep perpetually in thought that God is All-in-all is not incompatible with the fulfilment of one's daily duties, and is the only way by which one may learn to be in the world without partaking of its evil. Jesus proved for every Christian the possibility of holding fast to the omnipotence of God in the face of all that the so-called material senses may urge to the contrary, and his followers cannot protect their thought from the mesmerism of false belief by any less absolute way.
It is the law of divine reality, Christian Science, and not human philosophy, which draws the line between the material and the spiritual, between the suppositional existence of evil and the allness of God, and to work scientifically and successfully one must keep on the right side of this line. This demands alertness, the keeping of one's thought so clear as to what is true as to be a perpetual challenge to all that knocks at our mental door. Wrong thoughts may be detected by their inability to give the password, the infinity of good. Whatever implies that life, intelligence, substance, joy, power, etc., exist apart from God is an evil, and the sentinels of an army could as safely admit the foe into lines as can the Christian Scientist such erring beliefs, for the result in either case means conflict and possible defeat.
The argument that this constant vigilance is unnecessary springs from self-righteousness, a self-deceived sense of personal goodness, for the thought that recognizes its own nothingness without God recognizes also the danger of submitting to any other control than good. No one, however, need be disturbed over this demand, for it does not necessarily mean harder work, but better work. As has been pointed out, it is all a matter of thinking. What we think means everything to us, everything to our happiness and success; hence the need of careful and watchful discrimination between truth and error. A wrong concept of God bases human bondage to a sense of evil, and Christian Science is ushering in the era of emancipation through the true idea of God which it reveals; but it holds true in this struggle as in others, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." As the student gains the understanding of God as All, he will discern the claim of evil for what it is, nothing, and will neither fear it nor go to sleep over its asserted activity.
Mrs. Eddy clearly defines the personal side of this question when she says, "One should watch to know what his errors are" (Sentinel, Sept. 23, 1905 [My 233:21-22 (to ;)]). We are not called upon to watch our neighbors. It is in our own consciousness only that we are working out our salvation, and it is always our own sense of evil that we need to guard against and overcome. Students who speak of protecting their thought or their work do not, or should not, mean that they are protecting it from some person, but from "the rulers of the darkness of this world," — the entrenched beliefs of mind in matter, — and "against spiritual wickedness in high places;" hence the wisdom of remembering that a single enemy may betray an otherwise impregnable stronghold. It is our privilege to remain so awake to the truth of God's allness, the infinity of Life, Truth, Love, that, to quote our dear Leader's words, "our faith takes hold of the fact that evil cannot be made so real as to frighten us and so master us, or to make us love it and so hinder our way to holiness" (Messages to The Mother Church, p. 50 ['01 14:11-14 our]).
[Published March 23, 1912, in the Christian Science Sentinel as the lead article. Citations to current sources for some of the quotes from Mary Baker Eddy have been added in brackets.]