206-WATCH lest you believe that you have reached a place where you can stop healing the sick through scientific argument, because Mrs. Eddy in dictates that the time will come when this will be possible. How will we know when the time has come? By the fruits. When you can speak the word and it is done, then the argument is not needed. At times Mrs. Eddy advised students to continue with the argument; but at other times she directed them to stop, depending on the circumstances. In one letter she wrote, "The student is not yet where he can heal without the argument or hold himself right. Malicious animal magnetism is at work to deprive loyal ones of this power, and mentally persuade them not to argue. Why? Because this Truthtelling is a great neutralizer of their lies. Keep up your mental arguments on the side of Truth more than ever before, and tell others to do this. Be watchful, and every day ask Love to keep you from temptation and give you daily bread-grace to know and to do God's work." One danger from the argument is that one may believe that it is the argument itself that heals, when in reality its good effect is on the one who argues, helping to bring his thought up to the healing level. Mrs. Eddy once said, "In healing you either have to know the allness of God, where there is no sickness, as I used to do, or else you must know what the disease is and argue it down." At another time she said, "Now drop arguing and hold to God. I used to do my healing with-'God is All.' " Again she directed the students in her home to stop arguing, because she detected that, instead of spiritualizing their thought, as it was intended to do, it was materializing it. In Science we argue, not to make error and mortal mind more real, but less real, in order that the right side may become real to our consciousness. In proportion as this is done, our thought becomes the channel through which the healing power flows. The argument is the process whereby false belief is cleansed from consciousness, so that it may become a clear window-pane for God's light to shine through. It is our reflection of divine Mind that heals. The argument is merely the mental preparation which brings thought into spiritual oneness. Mrs. Eddy once said this very thing to Laura Sargent who wrote it down as follows: "Mother said in the old way mortal belief had one devil; now it had many, but we must not call it they, but evil. She said when we take up our watch, we do not help her with our thought; we simply clear our own thought of the belief of evil, and this is getting rid of our thought and getting out of God's way so the light can shine through, and this blessed light helps us and all in its shining. This is the blessed, blessed way from sense to Soul." At our present stage of growth, the argument-if it is used wisely and correctly-helps to roll back, or to part, the Red Sea, the waters of animal magnetism and materiality, so that Truth may pass through and do its regenerative work. We must do our part, in order that God may do His. Mrs. Eddy once said, "Truth does not work for you unless you work." When arguments become labored, however, lacking spontaneity and buoyancy, they tend to make the error more real. At such times we must seek to soar mentally with a light-hearted expectancy, leaving all earthly conceptions behind.