Editorial September 17, 1910 Issue

SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY

John B. Willis

Narratives of exploration always have a fascination which is both peculiar and persistent. We read them over and over again with unabated zest. They keep us ever in that absorbing attitude of expectation which is the vestibule of discovery, and when we remember that the prospector is always looking to a resulting gain which embraces everything that is highly esteemed of men, his enthusiasm, his readiness to suffer and to hazard, is fully explained.

With ever more startling rapidity, in our times, physicists and inventors have been bringing forth those marvels of material mastery which demonstrate the dominion of thought and prophesy the richness of the realms of the yet unknown. Undreamed-of forces and relations which, since the foundations of the world, have been waiting the perception of an adequate sense, are being enlisted in such wondrous ways for the service of mankind that the impossible of yesterday is constantly becoming the commonplace of today. This progress of discovery has always been born of the union of two things, confidence in the existence and availability of an unappropriated good, and patient endeavor in the line off induction from known phenomena, or deduction from a known law which is believed to be causally related to the desired end. Columbus would never have supplied the democratic idea with its broadest arena of expression and growth had he not been possessed of an unfaltering faith in the possibility of achieving his undertaking, and an unextinguishable enthusiasm in its pursuit. What was true of him has been true of every other great explorer, whatever the field of his research, and it is particularly true of the Discoverer of Christian Science.

Having reached an impelling conviction of the everpresence and availability of divine Truth for the enrichment of aspiring consciousness, and for the destruction of all that is opposed to the divine nature and will, Mrs. Eddy tells us how earnestly and patiently she sought through prayer and Scripture study for the positive and practical rule of scientific mental healing, and how "sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope" (Science and Health, p. 109) the momentous search became. Scenting from afar the fragrance of her longed-for land of faith, she held on her course, like the brave Genoese, despite all mortal adversities, until its empurpled shores burst upon her vision, an incontrovertible revelation of Truth whose attainment is to be a discovery for every individual.

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