One who has touched the hem of Christ's spotless garment in Christian Science begins to realize how much time and thought are bestowed upon the vanities of this world rather than upon those things which make for righteousness, peace, and health among men. He becomes painfully aware of the time spent in thinking and talking upon the too familiar subject of sickness, and he strives as never before to keep his own thoughts and conversation in Christ, Truth. To him "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
Why this change of base, does some one ask? Christ, Truth, has come to the consciousness of this individual and given him a glimpse of that which is real and eternal, of that which is above mortal ken, and this message from on high conveys to him naught of earth's dismal dream of evil,—it is a message of good, and of good only. He has awakened to find that evil is a mistake, a deception of sinful sense, and that its pretense of being something will and must surrender to the Christ-idea, which reveals the allness and completeness of good. In order to bring about this surrender he realizes that he must begin to reflect good by ceasing to express evil in thought, word, and deed. Then it is that he comprehends the meaning of the Scriptural command, "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ;" and he reasons thus: If I would follow Christ, I must begin now to guard the entrance to my mental abode, that no thought of sin, disease, or death may cross its threshold; to shoulder the cross of self-renunciation by denying admittance to every evil suggestion of a life separate and apart from God, good.
When the student of Science begins thus to think according to the Christ-standard of a perfect creator and perfect creation, and to order his conversation accordingly, the hissing of the serpent may be heard. Evil is aroused to the utmost, because the mask of ignorance is being torn from its shameless brow, and Christ, Truth, has come to earth to bring "deliverance to the captives, . . . to set at liberty them that are bruised." "All manner of evil" accusations are lodged against the exponents of Truth, because of their having adopted a new and higher order of thinking, calculated to refute and eventually to destroy the last vestige of a suppositional evil power or existence.
