There is an ancient fable which carries an important message. It goes something like this: Once upon a time on a cold, windy night a camel looked into the tent of his master and asked if he might be allowed to put his head into the tent to get warm. The master agreed. A little while later the camel asked if he could warm his neck also. And the master let the camel put his neck in. For a time the camel was contented. Then he asked if he might put his forelegs inside. Again his master consented. Very soon, the camel suggested that he come wholly inside; and when this was accomplished, he pushed his master out.
So evil of various names and natures would try to get into our "tents," our consciousness. A little fear, a little pain, a little discouragement, a little weariness, a little doubt—these are wedges of intrusion. But these intruders have no more right to be in our consciousness than the camel had to be in the tent of his master. Camels do not belong in tents. Nor does evil belong in man. Yet sometimes we are tempted to believe in evil's claims to presence and power; and, as the temptation becomes more and more insistent, we find ourselves in somewhat the same position as the master of the camel: we open our thought to the temptation and let it in; we accept its innuendos, its appeals to material sense testimony, its demands for recognition; and, almost before we realize it, the whole camel is in our tent!
"Stand porter at the door of thought," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health. And farther on, she explains: "When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them." Science and Health, p. 392;
