On page 210 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy writes: "Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full." Obedience to this rule should be the aim of every Christian Scientist. Certainly, as we succeed in thinking good thoughts more and more constantly, we shall think evil thoughts less and less, for we cannot think both at the same time. The displacing of evil with good through the spiritualization of thought is the demand of the truth which Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated, and which our Leader has re-established in Christian Science.
The Master gave us the command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." By his own example, Jesus showed us the way to attain this perfection. His consciousness being constantly and completely filled with Truth and Love, he was continually destroying some form of evil as he met it in his daily life. There were no formulas in Jesus' teaching, and there are none in Christian Science. The Science underlying Christ Jesus' teaching, which Mrs. Eddy discovered, is demonstrated in loving; in reflecting God, Love, and destroying error. This is done as we become conscious of the ever-presence of God, good, and the consequent never-presence or nothingness of evil. Gaining an understanding of this Science requires no remarkable intellectual qualification, as some suppose. The disciples were unlettered men for the most part. It does, however, require a willingness to put into practice the teachings of this Science.
Love needs to be actively obeyed. We can no more enjoy its beneficent effects by mere contemplation without application, than we can gain the cool refreshment of a swim in a lake by standing on the shore, looking at the water. To affirm actively the truth that God and His creation constitute the only real existence will spiritualize thought and destroy the belief of corporeality, the false sense of self as existent in matter. This belief of corporeality or evil is "a liar, and the father of it." When we consciously replace error with Truth, and love for others rather than self-love becomes our constant mental attitude, then the evil which attaches to this so-called self ceases to manifest itself in our experience. And this freedom blesses not only the individual, but others, as Mrs. Eddy makes plain where she says (Miscellany, p. 210): "Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort. And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited."
