"Our Lord and Master left to us the following sayings as living lights in our darkness: 'What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch' (Mark 13:37;) and, 'If the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.' (Luke 12:39.)" Thus Mrs. Eddy begins her article entitled "Watching versus Watching Out," on page 232 of Miscellany.
And then she continues farther on: "Can watching as Christ demands harm you? It cannot. Then should not 'watching out' mean, watching against a negative watch, alias, no watch, and gaining the spirit of true watching, even the spirit of our Master's command? It must mean that."
Among the definitions for "watch" in one dictionary are found the following: "To be on the alert, to be vigilant," "to be on the watch for," "to fulfil the duty of a watchman, sentinel, or guard." And a definition, now obsolete, is "to be or remain awake." These definitions denote activity, alertness, and being vigilantly awake.
To watch from the standpoint of the Christ is to maintain a positive watch. This watching is on the alert to reject the finite, personal sense of identity. And by this watching one can embrace the reflected glory of the Father, which belongs to the man of God's creating. This watching of the Christ permits one to know that the verities which constitute the divine Mind constitute one's present and eternal identity. True alertness causes the student to see that the Life which is divine Principle, Love, is present in all its eternal freshness, untouched by any suggestion of a yesterday. No matter how aggressive the mental suggestion appears to be, it finds nothing in the Christ-consciousness to respond to personal, temporal pretensions, whatever form they take.
We find the true sense of watching exemplified in the Bible story of Nehemiah's building of the wall. He was alert to see that good and its effects were alone acceptable. He also was alert to detect and reject immediately the subtle suggestions of the sly Sanballat, who tried to interfere with the work. Thus Nehemiah could say with the consciousness of Christly knowing that he had a great work to do and therefore he could not come down from the building of the wall to argue with aggressive mental suggestions.
Every student of Christian Science has this same great work to do. But let us see that it is done only by staying with the Christ, which gives us the alertness, vigilance, and aliveness necessary to prove evil suggestions powerless.
True watching should be twofold: watching for the good and watching that we be not deceived by evil, which sometimes parades in the guise of good. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, makes this statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 570, 571): "Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil's hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity."
The "good resident in divine Mind" is ever present to be claimed by reflection. Our Leader shows us throughout her writings, even as Jesus does in the Gospels, that man is not involved in a process of becoming good; rather, he is a spiritual idea, the individual expression of the "good resident in divine Mind." One's daily work is to defend oneself against the subtlety of the erring suggestions that man is part mortal and part immortal, part dust and part spiritual. The revelation of Christian Science is that man is completely spiritual. There is no more a mixture of good and evil in man than there is in man's divine Principle, God. There is nothing in man, as divinity's reflection, to respond to the so-called aggressiveness or subtlety of suggestion. Man can never respond to something less than divinity, and his identity is always spiritual.
To be conscious continually of these spiritual facts is true watching. But as long as we appear to the world as human beings, we must ever be alert to the evil beliefs which claim to be part of human thought. If we are convinced of the allness and oneness of the divine Mind, we cannot give reality to the carnal mind in the past, present, or future. What is called personal sense has nothing to do with man's identity. Jesus recognized this so clearly that he could say in substance that before the human concept was, the eternal Christ had always been. Jesus was always busy about the Father's business. He would permit nothing to dull his pure Christ-consciousness. It was Jesus' alertness and watchfulness that permitted the healing Christ to shine forth to all who sought it.
Whether he was passing through the midst of the crowd, resting in the boat tossing on the turbulent sea, or praying in the solitude of a mountain, Jesus maintained a constant watchfulness. Conscious of the indivisibility of cause and effect, he could say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). He was not saying that he was the Father. Jesus was too humble for that and too correct in his metaphysical statement concerning reality. He did say that he and the Father were one, meaning the eternal Christ, or his identity, was at one with the Father. This alert consciousness of reality is true watchfulness.
We need constant alertness to live the divine revelation of the Science of Christ, or Christian Science. Constantly, the personal sense of man would intrude and make us believe it to be our true identity. It offers its specious wares under the guise of, "I am sick; I am weary; I am alone; I am poor; I am unhappy," and so on. Whereas, the alertness demanded by Christian Science will have us immediately detect such suggestion for what it is, namely specious and untrue, for Science reveals that the Ego is God and that man has no private personal mind.
The writer once had an opportunity to prove what Mrs. Eddy says about watching versus watching out. After the First World War, he found himself confined to a hospital bed for some years. Then one day a nurse who had had a healing in Christian Science told him that the reading of Science and Health often brought healing. He purchased the book immediately and was soon, deep in its study.
After perhaps a year of endeavoring to be most watchful, steadily to observe reality, to denounce the claims of evil as unreal and untrue, and daily to maintain the facts of being regarding man's identity, his thought was arrested by the statement, "The transmission of disease or of certain idiosyncrasies of mortal mind would be impossible if this great fact of being were learned,—namely, that nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God" (Science and Health, p. 228). The sentence suddenly became alive. He saw that the personal sense of self is not identity. Man is not a finite being; rather, he is the expression of Life's being, the being into which nothing inharmonious can enter.
Then the door of the writer's consciousness suddenly opened and he found that man is not a miserable sinner, constantly punished for misdeeds, nor is he ever a victim of war. The thought came clearly that man has never left the heaven of God's presence, has never been a prodigal who needs to return to the Father's house, but that he is always the image of God, forever gloriously clad in the brilliancy of the light of the Christ.
Soon after this spiritual illumination of his thought, the writer was free from all his disabilities and was released from the hospital, healed.
True watchfulness is needed today to handle the aggressive mental suggestions of a world in turmoil, a world unable to live with itself. Students of Christian Science are well equipped to handle these suggestions, provided they are willing to watch as both Jesus and our Leader watched from the standpoint of the revelation of God's allness and oneness and the consequent nothingness of evil's vaunted suggestions. From this altitude of knowing, our watch will never be a negative watch, or no watch, but always a watching from the standpoint of the Christ, with its fruits of demonstration and victory. We are sentinels who watch with joy and gladness, because in reality all there is to experience are the glory and perfection of God. Glory and perfection constitute the heaven of His presence, which we experience as we demonstrate our true identity as sons of God.
