Spiritual consciousness is a sublime fortress. This consciousness inheres in divine Mind. No evil enters there. No enemy lurks therein. Nothing inimical to Life or man is found within the gates of this heavenly city. What a priceless possession is the awareness that God fills all space, exercises all power, and maintains man in His likeness, an understanding now available to us through the study of Christian Science!
As young students we eagerly lay claim to this rich heritage of true knowing. That is as it should be. To reflect God consciously and constantly is the goal, the ever-present possibility, which opens up to the neophyte in Science. Further growth, however, indicates there is a cross to be taken up before the El Dorado of our expectations is attained. Opposed to the spiritual understanding of God, gained through a study of Christian Science, is the common belief in negative evil mind, sometimes designated in Christian Science animal magnetism. The Christian Scientist is not perturbed by the claim of evil. His textbooks, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, have made plain to him the incontestable facts of God's allness and the reality of man as His spiritual reflection.
To spiritual understanding these facts are not opposed or denied, but are demonstrable. To mortal mind, ignorant of these truths, or blandly denying them, man appears to be material, separated from God, and subject to a power apart from Him. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states the truth which opens the eyes of the student to behold this false belief, this material thinking, as the enemy to be overcome. Only as one stoops to material-mindedness does he expose himself to the danger concealed in the stultifying of his heavenly aspirations, the slackening of his efforts to purify self, the distraction of thought from divine to mundane things. As Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook (p. 571): "Who is telling mankind of the foe in ambush? Is the informer one who sees the foe? If so, listen and be wise. Escape from evil, and designate those as unfaithful stewards who have seen the danger and yet have given no warning."
