Watching Point 396

396 — WATCH that you realize each day that mortal man can never be depended upon. Could you depend on a puppet or marionette, every movement of which is controlled by the whim of the operator? Mortal man is a puppet, with a mind that is human in belief, and that is controlled by the consolidation of universal thought. His consciousness is subject at all times to being invaded, changed, and influenced mesmerically without his knowledge or consent. His desires may be inflamed or quenched, his impulses altered or reversed, his conclusions shaped unconsciously, and prejudices, envy and hatred may be induced in him. All the while he nurtures such suggestions as his own.

His whole effort is to sell himself, not God, and yet his most intimate thoughts and desires cannot be depended on, until he has learned through Christian Science how to protect his thinking, and to relinquish the human mind for the divine.

Through its very weakness, the individual human mind must yield to the will of the majority, all the while under the delusion that it is deciding weighty matters according to its own intelligence and judgment. A mortal’s mind is like a lot where the public has been permitted to cross without restriction so long, that by law it has become public property. Thus the owner loses all power to prevent anyone who will, from tramping about on it and using it.

In a pamphlet called Christian Science History, Mrs. Eddy once wrote as follows, indicating that mortal mind and its erroneous suggestions are totally unreliable: “In my last class I did not refer to mental malpractice. Its members, generally, had taken the primary course and this instruction properly comes before that class. Without a question the student of Christian Science is not qualified to teach, preach or practice divine metaphysics, who knows not thoroughly how wisely and successfully to handle this heinous sin — mental malpractice.

“Without this understanding he cannot separate the tares from the wheat and destroy the tares — he cannot divide between an impartation from the immortal or divine Mind and the temptation, or the evil suggestion of human thought and argument; but this must be done, in order to obey the former, and resist and destroy the latter, and not till it is done will he be protected and imbued with wisdom and power to rise superior to evil suggestions. This attainment is indispensable whereby to establish a student on the scientific basis of Christian Science.”