WHEN tempted, Christ Jesus was ready with the rejoinder, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Thus he proved his sonship; and he was equally ready with "Nay" as with "Yea." A careful study of our Leader's work "No and Yes" shows with what enlightenment, courage, and fidelity our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, found and followed the way of the Master, the way of affirmation and denial; the way of dominion and triumph. She learned obedience in this matter of denouncing evil as unreal, though the lesson was a hard one, as she tells us (Retrospection and Introspection, pp. 37, 38), in relation to her writing of the chapter on Animal Magnetism in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." If it was essential that this chapter should be added, it is equally essential that it should be studied. Persistently, in this chapter, evil and all its claims are exposed and denounced as unreal, because unconnected with and underived from God, the only real power.
A careful analysis of the Lesson-sermon on the subject of "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced" in the Christian Science Quarterly shows how our Leader was led to expose this claim of evil and prove its unreality. Throughout the centuries, creeds and dogmas have darkened spiritual vision, mistaking evil for good, and regarding life as supposedly attainable only through death. How careful, then, the Christian Scientist should be, lest he be found mentally arguing for instead of against the suggestions of the carnal mind; lest he be found gloomily associating with, instead of joyously dissociating himself and others from, the claims of corporeal sense; lest he be found announcing instead of denouncing the arguments of animal magnetism and hypnotism.
Our Leader has pointed out that a false sense of man's origin underlies all discord. Does it not logically follow, then, that the true sense of man's origin alone can conquer sin, disease, death, and actually prove the nonexistence of materiality? It is noteworthy that in our Master's temptation in the wilderness the effort of error was to cause Jesus to doubt his own sonship and to deny his Christlikeness. "If thou be the Son of God," whispered the tempter. It was from the standpoint of Spirit and his spiritual sonship that Christ Jesus resisted and triumphed over every temptation; and the Christian Scientist can do no less. This is the way of scientific demonstration, the only way; for there is no good whatever in a mortal, and no evil whatever in man in God's image. Hence, the alert Christian Scientist is perpetually ready to bear witness to man's pure origin and pure heritage. There is no other way whereby one can be saved from the delusions of evil and emerge into the recognition of his spiritual identity.
