Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, must have been impressed by the famous painting by Edwin Long entitled "Diana or Christ?" for two large reproductions of this picture were hung on the walls of her home at Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The scene depicts a Christian maiden of the early Christian era being urged by her pagan lover to sprinkle incense on the altar of Diana in token of submission to that goddess and denial of her Christian faith. On her decision, she must have realized, rested the outcome: whether she would be restored to her lover or be thrown to the lions. The caption reads, "Let her cast the incense,—but one grain and she is free."
Daily, even hourly, Christian Scientists are faced with the questions: "To what am I giving my heart's homage? Am I listening to and believing the glittering promise of so-called mortal mind, that promise which was evidently being presented to the maiden as it had been to the Master (Matt. 4:9), All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me'? Or am I worshiping and obeying God, Spirit, Mind; laying my earthly all on the altar of Christ, Truth, and, clad in the Christly garment of love and understanding, willing courageously to face and overcome the lions of sin, disease, old age, discouragement, and death?" The difference between the wrong and the right homage is the difference between bondage and true liberty, sickness and health, sorrow and happiness; indeed, the difference between pagan superstition and spiritual understanding.
Today's mythology is even more deceiving than that of olden times. If disease is imaged on the body, perhaps we are tempted to accept the evidence of the senses, seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, or we may sometimes fear it, even as the ancients did the image of Diana. Instead, we should turn from the material evidence, understandingly deny its reality, see it as just another myth, and open our hearts and minds to the Christ, Truth, revealed in Christian Science. It is a scientific fact, being proved today in countless cases of healing, that the correction or healing of the false belief producing an erroneous condition results in the elimination or healing of the error. Christ Jesus scientifically disposed of the whole subject of idolatry and mythology when he dismissed the tempter with the words (Matt. 4:10), "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
