IN the fourth chapter of Matthew's Gospel we are informed that Christ Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. The temptations came to him in different forms, but fundamentally they were one temptation—a temptation to believe in other minds, other gods, other powers than the one omnipotent Mind, which is God. Jesus did not yield to this temptation in any form or in the slightest degree. He answered each suggestion of evil with a positive renunciation of error and an affirmation of Truth, his last statement being (Matt. 4: 10), "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
In the same positive manner that Jesus did, if we would resist the temptation to believe in evil and acknowledge the allness of the one Mind, God, we would be saved much heartache and tribulation. When sickness tempts us to believe in its reality and bids us bow down and worship it, we should reject it as a false claim, because God is the one Mind, All, omnipotent and omnipresent Spirit. We should realize, too, that God, divine Principle, Love, is the only substance and includes in His infinite consciousness all of His own spiritual ideas. These ideas constitute man and the universe.
Love's idea must be the emanation and manifestation of. the Mind conceiving it. Thus the only reality of any one of us is that which God conceives, knows, governs, and constitutes. Neither God nor the real man can be tempted of evil, for God knows it not. In the epistle of James we read (1:13, 14), "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."
