In human experience harmony or discord turns largely on the question of control. Observing the sad results of yielding to mortal willpower and conflicting selfish impulses, the Christian Scientist prayerfully resolves to perfect himself in the art of self-control. With this end in view he turns from the premise of an unruly mortal and seeks to realize that every individual idea throughout creation is under the control of the one divine Mind. So he learns to dissociate himself from evil and to know himself as identified with God's purposes only. In the one creation good alone exists. Therefore there is no element of disunity, loss of control, or insubordination to divine Principle.
The government of the one Mind is supreme and can be applied to the liberation of mortals. Equipped with this basic fact of Mind's control over all its creation, the Christian Scientist learns to resist temptation and also the contagion of bad examples. The evil which does not deceive us cannot influence us. Paul writes, "There are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers." Mortal mind is unruly, perpetually tempting us to lose control and give utterance to its beliefs of anger, fear, impatience, and so forth. But when divine intelligence, rather than these demented suggestions, controls human thought, Truth is voiced and error is silenced. Speech control one may successfully learn as soon as he truly desires to, through the application of Christian Science. This first step well taken leads to the next one of perfect thought control.
On page 14 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mrs. Eddy writes, "Wrong is thought before it is acted; you must control it in the first instance, or it will control you in the second." The way to escape the miscontrol of so-called mortal mind is to deny it presence or intelligence. There is actually no mortal mind within the infinite divine Mind, and matter cannot be found in the substance of Spirit. So-called matter inheres only in a hypothetical mental state. This state is unreal, for there is nothing additional or dissimilar to the one infinite divine Mind and its divinely controlled ideas. In proportion as control of thought, speech, and action is established on the scientific basis of one Mind, human experience has in it more of heavenly harmony.
