According to the early usage of the English language, to ward was to keep watch over, to hold in safety, to protect. A warden is one who keeps guard, one who is a watchman, or according to the dictionaries, "specifically a gate keeper." And a spiritual warden? That which keeps spiritual ward over the destinies of mankind, invoking through highest prayer the full power of God to safeguard and guide all right endeavor— this, surely, is a watcher at the gates!
What better wardens for the human sense of existence can there be than the "angels" defined by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581): "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." Angels for defense! Christ Jesus said in his hour of trial, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?"
Spiritual power is translated to the human need through the angelic office of prayer. Most Christians pray. Christian Science adds to the Christian's prayer the revelation that the acknowledgment of God as all-power logically shows evil to have no power. Just at that point of denying entity to evil, "counteracting" evil by comprehensive prayer takes place. Those unacquainted with Christian Science pray against evil as a fearful and real part of existence. But those who understand, in some degree, that evil has apparent power only as humanly educated mortals believe in and fear it, face the claims of evil declaring them to be as untrue as they are unrighteous. The spiritual warden of enlightened prayer invalidates every boast of evil and supplants it by holding to the presence and action of the spiritual fact of being, God and His idea.
