e accuser of our
brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and
night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the
word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the
death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil
is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that
he hath but a short time.

For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of
Hosts. What shall we say of the mighty conquest over all sin? A louder
song, sweeter than has ever before reached high heaven, now rises clearer
and nearer to the great heart of Christ; for the accuser is not there, and
Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain. Self-abnegation, by
which we lay down all for Truth, or Christ, in our warfare against error,
is a rule in Christian Science. This rule clearly interprets God as divine
Principle,--as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by
the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother. Every mortal at some period,
here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a
power opposed to God.

The Scripture, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many," is literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the
supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of error is seen; and we know
that the nothingness of error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that
touches the hem of Christ's robe and masters his mortal beliefs, animality,
and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing,--in a sweet and certain sense
that God is Love. Alas for those who break faith with divine Science and
fail to strangle the serpent of sin as well as of sickness! They are
dwellers still in the deep darkness of belief. They are in the surging sea
of error, not struggling to lift their heads above the drowning wave.

What must the end be? They must eventually expiate their sin through
suffering. The sin, which one has made his bosom companion, comes back to
him at last with accelerated force, for the devil knoweth his time is
short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The
dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods of
torture it may take to remove all sin, must depend upon sin's obduracy.

_Revelation_ xii. 13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast