Article August 29, 1908 Issue

"O LOVE THE LORD"

ROSA NOLAN.

Young students of Christian Science frequently question how it is that after coming into Science easily, and apparently making splendid headway, they once more find themselves confronted with the same problem which had troubled them before meeting with Science. Even to be faced with it again is disheartening, but to find that it does not yield to the first application of their understanding of Truth is so discouraging as almost to paralyze effort.

Is there not something of the "old thought," with its cry of "Only believe, and you shall be saved," underlying this very question? Are we not inclined to expect that our mere recognition of Christian Science as the truth will perform a complete metamorphosis in our lives without any further effort on our part, instead of earnestly facing the fact that, owing to our previous mistaken standpoints, we have, as it were, to readjust our world by demonstrating the reality of our recognition of Truth every step of the way; as one who has studied some branch of education under an incompetent teacher, and gained a faulty knowledge of the same, on discovering his mistake, labors with patient self-discipline to drop the erroneous knowledge and pursue that study along correct lines. And has not this phase to be passed in the pursuit of any art or profession. The first difficulties are overcome with ease and exhilaration; then one is apt to put theory in advance of practice, and discouragement follows the perception of how little one has really accomplished. An art master, known to the writer, believes that many a genius has been lost to the world through lacking the courage to push past this corner—which, once passed, although difficulties increase, they are surmounted with growing ease.

At this point in Science, some, as of old, turn back and walk no more with Truth, but to those who press on the "thin rind of the finite" is at last rent, and looking upon life from a spiritual altitude, they are able to declare with authority the glories of "fetterless Mind" (Science and Health, p. 84) to mortals groping in the valley of materialism below. On analysis, do we not find the real trouble to be (as indeed all trouble is) not in the recurring problem, but in the individual's attitude toward it? Scientists do not ask immunity from problems, but for faith bravely to meet them, and wisdom to solve them. When the mother of Zebedee's children came petitioning Jesus that her sons might sit, one on his right hand and the other on his left, in his kingdom, he replied, "Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Our Leader prepares us to drink of this "cup of sorrowful effort" (Science and Health, p. 26), but surely it is only our lack of faith that makes it sorrowful, and as we grow in the understanding of wisdom, Truth, and Love, we shall face our problems as joyously as David went forth to meet Goliath, happy in the knowledge that "the battle is the Lord's."

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