Paul, yearning to free the Corinthians from pagan entanglements, appealed to them thus (II Cor. 6:17): "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." In using the word "them," Paul undoubtedly referred to those who had not accepted the Christ, or who stood against the Christ in obstructing and hindering the unfoldment of the spiritual idea of the healing truth.
Today, as in Paul's day, the need is still to "come out from among them and be...separate"—to keep ourselves free from the binding tentacles of materialistic beliefs, claiming to hold us in bondage to sickness, sin, and death, and to accept into our consciousness only Christlike thoughts, emanating from the one infinite Principle, Love. Such thoughts ensure health, harmony, and an abundance of all good.
Mary Baker Eddy, corroborating Paul's admonition, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 451), "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate." She does not imply, nor did Paul, that in separating ourselves from evil we should withdraw from the world and become isolationists. Indeed, Jesus said (John 17:15), "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." It is our consciousness which must be kept pure and separate from every false suggestion of sickness, sin, frustration, lack, depression, or death.
