Chapter 24: What Constitutes Being Awake To The Suggestions of Malicious Mental Malpractice

WHOSO READETH LET HIM UNDERSTAND - Chapter 24.

WHAT CONSTITUTES
BEING AWAKE TO
THE SUGGESTIONS
OF
MALICIOUS MENTAL MALPRACTICE?

SCIENCE and Health declares, “More than profession is requisite for Christian demonstration. Few understand or adhere to Jesus’ divine precepts for living and healing. Why? Because his precepts require the disciple to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye,—that is, to set aside even the most cherished beliefs and practices, to leave all for Christ.”
To be an alert Christian Scientist is not easy. It requires the same quality of earnestness and sacrifice which success in any line of work demands.
First comes consecration,—willingness to forsake the ease of material sense for the attain-

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ment of the goal. And secondly perseverance, which never ceases working until that goal is attained. Jesus said, in illustrating this ceaseless perseverance and its inevitable result, “Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.”
Physical courage has always been lauded by the human mind, but moral courage, which is a higher sense of courage,—a nearer approximation to Mind activity—is seldom recognized.
In Christian Science moral as well as physical courage is requisite. Science and Health says, “It requires courage to utter truth.” At times it also requires tremendous so-called physical courage to meet the lies of material sense when it declares pain, suffering and anguish to be real and true. But every Christian Scientist has learned with joy that, when he stands unflinchingly on what he knows is true, the reward is great. He also knows that sooner or later every question must be settled on the side of right, and that regardless of the degree of moral and physical courage required, the present tests do not become lighter to the one who puts off doing the thing he knows is right. The old saying,
Procrastination is the thief of time” is truer

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perhaps in the practice and demonstration of Christian Science than in any other activity.
Duty postponed does not thereby become easier, but the reverse, for usually a conscience-stricken sense of unrest torments when work is left undone.
Christian Science insists upon doing today, the work of today, and understanding what that work is, and because of the allness of Mind, finds abundant time for its accomplishment. When work is well done, malicious mental malpractice can find no way to reach you—no antenna through which its suggestions can operate. Remember your antenna is constantly operating. Watch that it is ever in oneness with God.
The Christian Scientist is actively about his Father’s business. He is wide awake to the fact that evil ever keeps pace with good and he acts accordingly. He is not hurried, but to him each hour is valuable. Because God is constantly unfolding to His own idea the infinity of good, the wise man does not miss this wondrous unfoldment. He knows that infinity itself is not too long to show forth the glories of infinite Mind.
The Apostle Paul said that Jesus “for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” The Christian Sci-

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entist, like Jesus, does not make too much of the cross because, in translating the cross back to the crown, he knows “the joy” that is set before him and continually awaiting his acceptance.
If the practice of Christian Science takes a full measure of physical and moral courage, it is worth it. Then give it your all. The “pearl priceless” is obtained only by selling all that thou hast, and buying it. Buying it means exchanging every material concept for the spiritual sense through consecrated insistency. It is not giving up things, but concepts. If this seems a hard cross, it is made easy by the discernment of its true nature as the negation of God, which offers you when reversed the very presence of all good; and by expressing joy and appreciation for all that Christian Science holds for you. No one ever regretted carrying that cross.
Mrs. Eddy expresses exactly what constitutes Christian Science, and what makes a Christian Scientist, in her clear statement in Miscellany, “To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science.” Does not keeping “human consciousness in constant relation with the divine,” mean exactly what you are doing when you refuse to deal with the effects of

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evil,—the beast and the false prophet, matter and mentality—and turn your whole attention unreservedly to the “cause” malicious mind, and translate malicious mind back to its reality divine Mind? Thus doing, malicious mental malpractice may knock at your door, but you can say in regard to it as did Jesus, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me,” in other words, malicious argument cannot present to me a single one of its lies to which I am not awake, and which I am not vigorously translating back to the truth that the lie is the lie about.

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