MORTAL man has been trained through centuries of false education to look to the body for news as to his chances of well-being, ignorant of the fact that the mortal body can image forth only the conditions of the mortal thought bent anxiously upon it. The Christian Scientist learns that the springs of life are in God, divine Mind, that God alone needs to be questioned as to the laws of being, and that the answer is always good. He also learns that since man's life is in Mind, not in body, recourse must be had to Mind, and not to matter, in the time of need. The Mind which creates is fully able to sustain its own creation. Experience in Christian Science healing proves this to be true.
The beginner, however, is apt to have difficulty in ridding himself of a sense that there is something personal in the claim of evil,—a mine and thine, as it were. Christian Science teaches that error is always impersonal, and never amalgamates with or touches in any way the child of God, who is the reflection of absolute good. This is at first more readily appreciated with regard to another than in connection with one's self. It is easy, in healing another of an ailment, to see the error as entirely dissociated from the individual. Though the error that claims to be a part of one's self may seem to talk more loudly, it is in reality just as separate from the person. One is called upon to face a certain condition of mortal mind, that is all. Just where it pretends to manifest itself, here or there, does not alter the facts of the case. One stands as a soldier of God to fight His battle in His name and through His power, and one is capable of meeting the issue just because the child of God remains unscathed, and so expresses the Principle which is the "law of annihilation" (Science and Health, p, 243) to all evil.
The soldier who knows he can trust his general is the better fighter. The Christian Scientist, knowing the God is eternally the same, can trust his general in the war with error. Love always remains Love. Omnipotent good can always be called upon with confidence. With a larger realization of this fact, the fear of a struggle dies away. "It takes two to make a quarrel," but if God is all, what is the opponent? Darkness dose not fight the coming dawn. Jesus, identifying himself with the Christ, said, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." The dawn does not recreate the earth, but reveals it already created. The darkness was not an inherent quality of the earth pro tempore, but the result of one's having temporarily lost sight of the sun.
