Editorial July 9, 1904 Issue

The True Working Basis

It is not unusual for those coming to Christian Science to make very large demands upon it in the way of insistence that their every problem, physical and metaphysical, shall be promptly solved. This is especially true, perhaps, of those who are somewhat habituated to theological and philosophical thought, and sometimes such persons have named the speedy settlement of all their difficulties as the one ground on which they are willing to honor the subject of Christian Science with their serious consideration.

For these as for all others it is needful to understand that while the working basis of the novice in Christian Science is very comprehensive in its inductions, it is necessarily of modest area in its demonstrable knowledge. We cannot enter upon "the narrow way" until the inflations of self-confidence and intellectual pride have collapsed, and we have become "as a little child" in our teachableness and simplicity. In the course of this schooling in humility, we learn to say, "I don't know," regarding many things concerning which we were once not only opinionated but dogmatic. We also learn that our ability to solve the larger problems to-morrow is invariably heralded by our willingness to recognize the beginnings of spiritual perception, and patiently work at the lesser problems to-day. We thus come to apprehend that though the kingdom of Truth is higher than the heavens, and compasses all knowledge and all reality, its disclosure in the awakening consciousness is fittingly likened to the grain of mustard-seed "which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown, it . . . becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

Respecting the apprehension of the profoundest truths, Mrs. Eddy has said that it is to be reached "by following upward individual convictions undisturbed by the frightened sense of any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day." "Until the heavenly law of health, according to Christian Science, is firmly grounded, even the thinkers are not prepared to answer intelligently leading questions about God and sin" (Unity of Good, pp. 6, 7).

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