Article August 11, 1928 Issue

"Seek, and ye shall find"

W. CYPRIAN BRIDGE

How greatly would our load be lightened and our progress heavenward be accelerated if, when stumbling and groping more or less blindly along the rugged way, or hesitating which to take of the many paths opening up before us, some of which look more enticing than others, we constantly kept before us the comforting assurance of our Master recorded in the eleventh chapter of Luke, to the effect that the honest and diligent seeker will infallibly be rewarded with success. There is nothing equivocal about that promise, nor is it addressed to a privileged few; but, on the contrary, it is a divine assurance extended to all mankind—to the highly placed and the lowly, to the Gentile and the Jew—for the encouragement of each and every one of us. We do, however, learn from various passages in the Bible that our search must be whole-hearted and continuous, not desultory or intermittent. Both in the Pentateuch and in the chief of the "wisdom" books known to us as "Proverbs," diligence is declared to be necessary to success; while in several of his epistles Paul impresses upon those to whom he is writing the necessity for exercising this virtue.

We must, then, be zealous in our search after that which we desire to find; and the more we value the object of this search the more earnest and sustained will be our efforts to discover it. The Science of being is not laid bare in a moment, nor is it revealed to the casual prospector; for as our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 3), "To understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire." That is to say, there must be no slackening in the process of seeking; it must always be our main preoccupation. Should the worldly-minded raise objection to this on the ground that it savors of the transcendental, in that it would interfere with the due performance of one's daily tasks and obligations, they can be refuted by another of the Way-shower's injunctions, namely, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness: and all these things shall be added unto you."

How feasible and practical is this command, many of those who are endeavoring to obey it can testify; for do not our periodicals frequently publish testimonies recording how success hitherto lacking in business, in the arts, in literature, in fact in every description of legitimate and worthy undertaking, has come to those who have progressed in the realm of the spiritual by making the study and practice of Christian Science the main concern of their lives? Mrs. Eddy's illuminating explanation of the true nature of prayer has made it perfectly plain that while yet engaged in our ordinary vocations we can obey Paul's admonition to "pray without ceasing." And it is prayer such as this which constitutes the most effectual method of seeking. Those, therefore, who fear, because of error's suggestion, that it is too unpractical in this busy world to pay heed to this behest, lest they should be losers rather than gainers, can be reassured by the proofs so abundantly forthcoming that for every shadowy material possession they relinquish, as a result of their growth in grace, they gain a greater measure of that real substance which constitutes all that is worth having, and which consequently includes within itself all true contentment.

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