Article October 18, 1930 Issue

"Earth's preparatory school"

KATHRINE AAGAARD

To one in great need of encouragement came the following message, as though whispered gently into consciousness: "Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost." Humbly acknowledging this angel-thought as given to us by our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 486), the sufferer knew that it was the one and only way to take, and there and then resolved to take it. "Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost." Not merely ought to be, but "must be," improved!

That which makes Christian Science so dear to its students is its practicality. From the rising of the sun to the next daybreak there is not a moment in which its infallible Science cannot be proved true. The first awakening thought of the one striving to follow its teachings reaches out to the all-loving Father-Mother God with a pure longing, and he prays with the Psalmist, "Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee." Resting in the promise that "before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear," the Christian Science student is ready to launch out upon the waters of his day's work, work wherein correct thinking is the only chart whereby he can be safely guided. The waters are not by any means always free from foam and fury, but with a stout heart he goes to his task. Temptations may meet him to right and left—the larger ones, perhaps, of latent sin, mental laziness, disease, or discouragement, and the more subtle ones of impatience, a sense of lack, strained human relationships, and so forth. But with the ever present weapons of Mind—spiritual ideas understood and utilized—he courageously goes forth to battle with them as one already assured of victory.

It takes clear spiritual insight and great patience to look into one's own heart and there to segregate the good from the evil, to differentiate between mortal mind's base or mistaken thinking and the sweetness and wholesomeness of righteous thinking. The student of Christian Science knows that "earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost;" that there is no time like the present for learning the needed lessons, and that procrastination will only add to the growth of weeds which ought, rather, to be uprooted and destroyed.

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