A Gardener at work with her rake unknowingly encroached upon a blue jay's cache—a walnut buried among the leaves. Like a flash the owner of the treasure was on hand to claim and defend his possession by swift darts and sallies and outraged squawkings. Discovering the cause of the noisy onslaught, the gardener tossed the nut to its indignant owner, who carried it off to safety in the crotch of a nearby tree. This small creature's fearless instinct equipped him for his victorious defense and upward flight, and taught a useful lesson.
We too are equipped to lift ourselves beyond the reach of harm. Christian Science has brought to light the primal truth that, derived as he is from the divine Esse, the actual man whom God causes to be cannot be other than a celestial. Man, the spiritual. compound idea of God, is free from contact with materialism and so knows no experience of inharmony, infirmity, or evil. Unfettered by the belief that he lives in matter, the real man of God's creating dwells in infinity, as the universal spiritual evidence of God's inexhaustible creative conception and power. We catch glimpses of this, our true selfhood, in those spiritually clear moments when, rising above materialism, we commune consciously with God in Christianly scientific prayer.
"We apprehend Life in divine Science only as we live above corporeal sense and correct it. Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence,—our health, our longevity, and our Christianity." So writes our inspired Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 167). It is in the consistent hourly practice of living above corporeal sense and correcting it that the student of Christian Science is made ready for victory when earth's elements would press a prolonged siege or wage an aggressive attack, He has learned to hear the voice of Truth speaking above earth's din. and experience has taught him how to rise and follow Truth's directing.
