Watching Point 430

430 — WATCH lest you yield to the temptation to look at yourself humanly as such a hopeless specimen of a sinner, that you seem no good to yourself or anyone else. Once Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Do not look to matter to tell you your success, but look up, for your harvest is right at hand. You know the Father’s love; trust it. Then when you hear a whisper, ‘Now you are a sinner and so and so is your punishment, this suffering is the consequence,’ put it out; put it out. Animal magnetism says you are a sinner when you know you are not. Then empty your thought of fear and say, ‘I look to God, my Father, to see what I am. He alone can tell me of myself.’”

The man who has done wrong must acknowledge that wrong in order to be healed. He must say, “The animal magnetism which I have allowed to use me is the sinner, and I have a duty to perform in destroying the hold I have permitted it to have on me. I have permitted a lie to represent me and I must pay the price; but the lie is the sinner and not me. I will watch more carefully in the future, to be sure that I do not let animal magnetism represent me — the image and likeness of God.”

In Science we should let animal magnetism take the punishment for sin, and we should escape that punishment by escaping from animal magnetism; but man as the perfect child of God should never admit that he is a sinner.