"No greater hope have we than in right thinking and right acting, and faith in the blessing of fidelity, courage, patience, and grace," writes Mary Baker Eddy (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 209). Mankind's freedom to think aright is God-bestowed, therefore eternal and ever present. Right thoughts, clear thoughts, honest thoughts, always emanate from divine Principle and unite man's consciousness to God. Right thoughts have unbounded might; honest thoughts equip men with power to gain the victory over evil.
The Master could not have given Christianity to the world if his thoughts had not originated with Principle. No ambition for popularity, power, or position prompted him. Such prompting comes not from Principle but from mortal mind, which the Master never honored or made the basis of his thinking. The Master's mission was to demonstrate the Christ, and the desire to serve God and his brother man prompted his every thought. He never swayed from the direct course of Truth. He proved that his God-given right to freedom of thought could not be taken away.
It is recorded in the fourth chapter of Matthew that when Jesus was in the wilderness and "an hungred," the devil, cloaking aggressive evil suggestion with a spiritual purpose, tempted him to prove himself to be the Son of God by turning stones into bread. The Master, however, held to his oneness with the Father, and, reasoning scientifically, answered, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
