99 — WATCH lest you believe that the commonly accepted cause of disease is the real one, such as exposure causing a cold, or bad food upsetting the stomach. A Scientist has gone beyond the primary causes that mortals believe they suffer from. He could manifest a cold only as his thought dropped from the high recognition of God’s law as supreme, to the level where he accepted consciously or unconsciously the power and reality of medical law, mental malpractice or contagious fear. The scientific cure is to cast out false belief and regain one’s understanding and acceptance of the fact that man is perpetually under the law of God, where his health is permanent and independent of the claims of matter.

We must always be suspicious of any cause for disease that seems humanly obvious or materially logical. The power of error lies in its ability to conceal the causes of its effects. One must trace from effect back to cause to find the latter to be mental. Then can the problem be corrected at its source. The argument of a material cause for a material effect is as much part of the animal magnetism of illusion that must be exposed and cast out, as the evidence of the sickness itself.

Once a man had a small growth that did not yield to Christian Science treatment. The argument came to have a slight operation. This suggestion that the condition was material and that an operation could remedy it was the animal magnetism that needed to be gotten rid of, since in reality the effect was no more material than its cause.

79 — WATCH lest you accept one of the four suggestions which handled the five foolish virgins: (1) That man’s spiritual light was once lit, but now it has gone out. (2) That it is possible for it ever to go out. (3) That man’s supply of spiritual oil that comes from infinite Mind can be limited. (4) That it is possible to enter into a permanent consciousness of the Christ as the true selfhood of man, through the light that is borrowed from another.

In reality the five foolish virgins had unlimited spiritual oil given them by God; hence it must have been mesmerism that deceived them into believing that it was limited. The solution to their problem certainly was not to borrow oil, since God’s demand is that each one gain for himself the recognition of where the oil comes from. Error can never rob anyone of his spiritual understanding. It can only suggest that he has lost it, or that it has given out. Before mortal man will lose his mortality, he must learn to protect himself and stand guard against such a false belief.

67 — WATCH lest, knowing that effect follows cause, you let go unchallenged any situation in which the effect would indicate a purely material cause. Never yield to the manifestation of human domination without a scientific protest.

Once a man confessed that he had a compulsion, which he could not resist, to read through to the end, anything printed, no matter what it was, once he started in. This would seem like a trivial thing, but it is an illustration of the relentless nature of mortal suggestion, when unresisted and unchallenged by truth.

462 — WATCH lest you complain when God calls upon you for a test of true loyalty. A dog is trained by being given a bit of food as a reward, each time he obeys. The day comes when he is required to obey without the rewards. The time comes when God requires our obedience from sheer love of good, even if we get no human harmony as a reward.

It is a simple matter to want to obey God and watch thought, when rewards in human health, harmony and prosperity are promised; but Mrs. Eddy once asked this searching question (See C. S. Journal, Vol. 5, page 56), “Are Christian Scientists as faithful as the seasons, birds and flowers? . . . Will they sing in the storm? If buds of hope disclose scarcely one blossom, and birds are silent, will they yet wait and work … ?”

461 — WATCH lest you accept the suggestion that there is an impersonal power apart from God operating personally, that can thwart the mighty action of good. It is such an abnormal and impossible claim — it is such an insult to God — that we should find it easy to deny and silence it. In the early days of Science this claim manifested itself in the malpractice of renegade students attempting to thwart the work of Mrs. Eddy and of her students. Later she directed her students to meet this claim impersonally, stating that the time had passed in which to handle it personally. Once she said, “Handle the thought of reversal. You can do it. Is there a devil that can reverse God’s government? No!”

459 — WATCH that you define material sense, not as something you have, but as something you believe.

500 — WATCH that you remember that spirituality alone can handle the claim of malpractice in and from others, as well as in yourself. Only through spirituality can the error be seen as an impersonal claim. Only in this way can the claim be destroyed without harming the channel. Once Mrs. Eddy wrote to Julia Field-King, “I see you cannot take up personality so as not to make it real to yourself, nor harm the individual; so leave this out, be sure. This ability belongs alone to spirituality. No human, mortal, or material sense can enter into it or it prevents the good results, both to the sinner and the sinned against.” She also wrote, “One needs to protect himself from his own false beliefs alone; therefore the only wrong thinker or mental malpractitioner there is or can be, is one’s own self; — the beam in one’s own eye is the whole of evil. All our warfare is located within the confines of our own thought.”

499 — WATCH that you realize that the error connected with the claim of animal magnetism, is not that the devil is in us, but that God is out of us. We can regard war, sickness and sin as merely phases of the claim that man is absent. When we realize the ever-presence of man, we know that there can be no war, no sin, sickness or death, since man is the Christ idea of God, forever reflecting the harmony of divine Love.

498 — WATCH that you regard God as the source of affection as well as protection. This point can well be remembered by thinking of Him as PA. See Miscellaneous Writings, 263:12. In war men turn to Him for protection who have never prayed before; but the question is, what will they do when the war is over? Unless they have established a sense of affection for Him, they are apt to forget Him, and the good effect of having been driven to trust in Him in time of trouble will be lost. The sense of His protection causes us to turn to Him in trouble, and the sense of affection for Him helps us to remember Him when we are not in trouble.

497 — WATCH that you measure your growth by God rather than man, by the distance your brethren in Christ have traveled with you, and not by the distance you have traveled away from them. Jesus told us that as we are lifted up, we will draw all men unto us. As we rise into the consciousness of eternal harmony, we must feel that we are taking all mankind with us, since divine sonship belongs to all.