Alertness

The word “alert” is derived from the French alerte, originally a l’erte, “on the watch, … (standing) on a height, where one can look around.” It also connotes vigilance, wakefulness, and readiness to act instantly. Standing implies activity in maintaining balance, poise, and uprightness. To stand on a height where one may look around suggests altitude, elevation, a vantage point.

Such a view of the word recalls a picture of those faithful sentinels who, from commanding positions on the mountain tops or other elevated places, keep watchful eyes continually over vast stretches of billowing forest trees. It is their duty to detect the first tiny puffs of smoke which indicate the beginning of a forest fire, and to take immediate steps to quench it. Thus is saved annually much valuable timber and perhaps many human lives.

In the Manual of The Mother Church (p. 42), under the heading, “Alertness to Duty,” Mrs. Eddy says, “It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind.” Students beginning the study of Christian Science sometimes wonder just how one is to go about defending himself in the most effective manner. In the word “alertness” may be found the key.

When one is on a height, he can see more clearly; his vision is not obstructed by material obstacles; his horizon is wider, his view more beautiful. In order to reach the spiritual height upon which one may stand and look around, one must rise above the testimony of the material senses. One does this by contemplating the nature of God, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient divine Mind, and of the true man, the real man, made in God’s image and likeness. Such vision is gained by affirming, with understanding and conviction, the allness of God, good, and by denying emphatically and persistently the possibility of any other power or presence; by refusing to admit the testimony of material sense, and by planting one’s self firmly and without faltering on the testimony of spiritual sense. Thus do we reach the “secret place of the most High,” that height or elevation from which we may survey the universe of God’s creating.

From this vantage point of spiritual consciousness, what may be seen? If God is the only presence, the only power, the only Truth, we should be looking for God. Can God be an enemy to that which He creates? Such is inconceivable. In God we find only good, only safety, only absolute and permanent perfection. Since evil is not, then, a part of God’s creation, we must be alert to perceive and instantly ready to act upon the mandates of God, rejecting every claim to an opposite to good.

We are told to defend ourselves “daily against aggressive mental suggestion.” Whence comes aggressive mental suggestion? Since there is only one Mind, God, and since God is always good, there can be no mind or minds from which evil suggestions can emanate. Then from what are we to defend ourselves? From erroneous beliefs and false conclusions. There is no other adversary. Evil is “neither person, place, nor thing” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 71); it is a falsity, illusion, lie. And it is in the unreal consciousness that claims to have a self-hood apart from God, that the adversary must be met and proved unreal. From our own educated beliefs in an entity opposed to God, good, we must defend ourselves.

This work must be done daily, even hourly. To put off the heavy bulk of erroneous beliefs, opinions, theories, and philosophies demands regular, systematic, thorough work, in which the true Christian Scientist engages with increasing joy and spontaneity. He knows that only by such persistent and faithful efforts will he finally be able to look out upon God’s universe and declare with the Revelator, “I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God.”