"Obeying the divine Principle which you profess to understand and love, demonstrates Truth. Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God,—is obedience; being 'faithful over a few things.' If in one instance obedience be lacking, you lose the scientific rule and its reward: namely, to be made 'ruler over many things.' A progressive life is the reality of Life that unfolds its immortal Principle." In these inspired words from "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 116, 117) Mary Baker Eddy sets forth four fundamental requirements which demonstrate obedience to God, and which are certainly essential to "a progressive life" in His service.
Christian Science teaches that the post of duty is always the position or standpoint of spiritual vision and reality; in other words, that in proportion as we think spiritually, reflecting the one eternal Mind, which is God, we are obedient to Him— we are at our post. Therefore the Christian Scientist strives always to align his thinking with the understanding of God as taught in the Bible and in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy.
To be at one's post, to be "never absent" and "never off guard," is to be ready to refute the false arguments of material sense which claim to assail and tempt with beliefs of sin, sickness, and discord. Listening to these arguments and accepting them as true, we are "off guard" and desert our post. Confronting them with the certainty of God's allness, of His omnipotence and ever-presence, thus refuting and destroying them, we are at our post.
