Chapter 6: Why Is It Necessary To Handle Malicious Mental Malpractice?

WHOSO READETH LET HIM UNDERSTAND - Chapter 6.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY
TO HANDLE
MALICIOUS MENTAL MALPRACTICE?

IN THE study of mathematics, you begin with the first simple rules of arithmetic. Addition is the starting point. You first learn that three plus three equals six, and so on. Then follow in orderly sequence subtraction, multiplication and division.
Doubtless in the beginning as a child, you did not even know what the figures represented but you soon overcame that ignorance and as you grew more interested the ignorance confronting you vanished.
Dealing with addition, you had to meet merely the ignorance about addition; with subtraction, the ignorance about subtraction; with multiplication, the ignorance about multiplication, the ignorance always keeping pace and advancing with the unfoldment of the rule. In every

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case the ignorance applied only to the new rule and was as simple as the rule itself.
When you reached the more complicated subject of fractions, the ignorance about them also appeared more complex than the former ignorance. However, you quickly learned that the intelligence governing fractions was supremely simple when properly applied. It was merely a question of adding the intelligence about fractions to the intelligence about easier problems.
In other words, as you advanced in arithmetic you discovered that you used the intelligence applicable to each immediate rule added to the intelligence applied to some former rule. Likewise in higher mathematics, the ignorance always keeps pace with and is overcome by the intelligence of each new rule. The negative always accompanies the positive, which it negates. Now apply this to the practice of Christian Science.
When thought went no higher than thinking in terms of matter, the clear, consecrated discernment that there was, “no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter,” as Science and Health states, was sufficient to release you from much of matter’s bondage. In fact, if that was as far as you had gone in your understanding of

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Christian Science, your devotion to it enabled you to heal every error presented to you.
Your next step was to analyze each claim more minutely to discover what was the anatomy involved, and to take the specific error (anatomy involved) back to God. You discovered there could be but one of anything, and that God imparted and maintained that one, perfect and intact; that it was, also, your one, and everywhere present and, therefore, was right where the claim masqueraded. With this realization you healed freely and quickly.

From that point, you went on to prove what Jesus meant when he said of those that believed on him, of those that understood him, “and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father,” because the “I” no longer is contemplating effect but God, the one cause, divine Mind, and has become one with the Father, Mind.

It was to this present mental unfoldment that Jesus also referred when he said “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, . . . stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand) . . . Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” The holy place is Mind, and evil, malicious men-

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tal malpractice the abomination of desolation, standing there, means evil no longer operating as matter and material “laws”, but as pure mind, the negation of the divine Mind.
It is at this point of his unfoldment that the Christian Scientist finds himself today. Using the mathematical analogy, he is no longer dealing with the simple rules, of addition or even of fractions, but he is in higher mathematics. So in Science he has reached the highest to all —pure metaphysics—and he must bring to bear on his problems the intelligence of pure Mind, uncontaminated by finite sense, in order to destroy the negation. Malicious mental malpractice is the ignorance confronting him at each advancing step and is the only thing that does confront him. Just as the whole of mathematics and the ignorance about it are embodied in the most intricate problem, so pure Mind is con-fronted with malicious mental malpractice embodying within itself all ignorance of Mind.
Through progress, the Christian Scientist is now meeting evil in its final phase. This actually should be encouraging to him, and he can afford to “look up” as Jesus said “and lift up (his) head; for (his) redemption draweth nigh.” He understands why his redemption draweth nigh, for he knows that evil has reached its highest

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ignorance; the ignorance about pure Mind which marks the end for the translation, by reversal, of pure evil mind back to God, divine Mind, leaving “nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed,” as Science and Health states.
Evil is now doing its worst. As the negation of pure Mind, it faces its end. There is nothing worse to follow. It has been found the lie about Truth in every detail and the lie has been reversed and given back to God.
But, this vigorous and wonderful warfare with evil requires consecrated work. There is no room for indolence or dreaming. Jesus admonishes us to watch, and he repeated, again “I say unto you, watch.” Why this demand to watch? Mrs. Eddy answers the question in her article “Watching versus Watching Out,” in Miscellany, where she sternly rebukes not watching against a negative watch, alias, no watch, in these words, “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?” When Jesus asked his disciples to watch with him, did they watch, or did they succumb to the treacherous argument of sleep?
Jesus knew that he was meeting the subtle argument of malicious mind that life, substance

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and intelligence were in matter, when he asked them to watch with him and to help destroy that argument. But his disciples were unable to help him, so he watched alone, and so completely overcame the arguments of evil that he was able to prove his oneness with Mind. Thus he became the supreme example for all men.
Today we are called upon to watch more assiduously than ever before. We are watching from a higher watchtower; the watchtower of the positive, infinite activity of pure Mind. In consequence, the enemy is negatively just as active. The only way to defeat this enemy is to reverse it by translating it back to God, to the one source of all.
Evil gets is apparent power from the fact of its being the negation of infinite Mind’s activity and alertness. It automatically does in reverse everything that God does directly. When this is not understood, one is apt to feel he is dealing with something that thinks and that can mentally harm him. To the metaphysician, such a conclusion is preposterous, for he knows what is operating and attempting to retard his progress, just as the mathematician understands the ignorance that tries to checkmate him at every advancing step. If you imagine that ignorance can think logically, then you are likely to believe

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that ignorance can think in the realm of pure Mind; that it can conjure up some deviltry to checkmate the metaphysician. The Christian Scientist is never checkmated by malicious mental malpractice, but is checkmated by his own ignorance of what malicious mental malpractice is, and of its operation as the negative of infinite intelligence.
There is, however, one important difference between the ignorance confronting one in higher mathematics, and the ignorance confronting one in the highest phases of Christian Science. Mathematical ignorance is plain ignorance of facts without any directed intent back of the ignorance, because the principle governing numbers is called a dead principle. Hence the negation in the ignorance of mathematics is without pre-meditated intent.
The exact opposite of this is the case in Christian Science where God, the divine Principle of being, as Mind itself, is infinitely active intelligence directing the whole of being. The negation or ignorance of this intelligence must be infinite ignorance which assumes, as the negative, the opposite of every quality of good, but in its infinity of ignorance it appears as infinitely intelligent ignorance. It has no power of its own

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and when reversed, automatically becomes the very presence and activity of God.|
Our work as Christian Scientists is to be about our Father’s business in the realm of unfoldment that we have attained, where Satan is attempting to stand in the holy place of Mind and to operate as pure evil mentality. Satan can be dethroned from this pinnacle of evil only by the understanding of pure divine Mind and its operation.

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