"As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it." This inspiring description of true defense given in the thirty-first chapter of Isaiah illustrates the manner in which Truth defends the citadel of each individual consciousness. Through Christian Science a spiritual realm of ideas is revealed where thought soars joyous, fearless, and free, expressing or reflecting the dominion, the power, and the presence of divine Love, or Principle. Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," under the marginal heading "Soaring aspirations" (pp.511, 512), "The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love." These soaring aspirations which fly in "the open firmament of heaven," in "the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love," are truly our defense, for they are conscious only of the perfection and presence, the harmony and happiness, of divine being.
Defense is not merely a state of resistance to error; it detects and attacks with the consciousness of good's allness any claim to existence, power, or presence apart from Truth. True defense is an active state of thought which utilizes and expresses ideas of Mind by proving the allness and ever-presence of divine Principle, God, and the consequent nothingness of all unprincipled beliefs. To attempt to detect and destroy error by remaining on the level which believes in its reality, and merely denying this belief, will not prove the all-power and all-presence of God. Every valid denial of evil is based on the understanding of the perfection of God and of man as God's likeness. To attempt to rid oneself of erroneous thoughts through suppression or through evasion, while still believing in the reality of evil and in its disastrous results, may seem to bring temporary freedom but leaves a vacuity in human consciousness that consequently invites more errors to lodge within it.
Jesus described this state of thought in the parable of the unclean spirit that left a man and went forth through desert places and, unable to find a resting place, returned to its original abode and found the man's consciousness empty, "swept and garnished." Then the unclean spirit sought seven other evil spirits or beliefs worse than itself and they dwelt there, so that the last state of that man was worse than the first (see Luke 11:24-26). This is not the defense which dislodges and destroys error through the knowing of the all-presence of Truth and its ideas. True defense is experienced by that consciousness which is filled with the realization of the ever present, ever-active nature of Principle, Truth, and Love. Truth's defense lies in knowledge of its eternal, indestructible, self-existent nature, for Truth is the eternal reality of all being.
