Article January 9, 1937 Issue

"Earth's preparatory school"

INA S. FARLOW

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, declares (p. 486), "Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost." This "preparatory school" is open to all of earth's children. The needed instruction is indicated in part in these words in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 310): "To impersonalize scientifically the material sense of existence—rather than cling to personality—is the lesson of to-day."

Mortals learn by experience; hence, as our Leader says (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 11), "Sickness is the schoolmaster, leading you to Christ; first to faith in Christ; next to belief in God as omnipotent; and finally to the understanding of God and man in Christian Science, whereby you learn that God is good, and in Science man is His likeness, the forever reflection of goodness."

Among the lessons to be learned in this "preparatory school" is that of at once rejecting the suggestions of error when presented to our consciousness. An old adage reads, "He who hesitates is lost." When, instead of rejecting, we listen to the first subtle suggestion of the tempter, we leave our thought open for the next lie, and begin to seek a cause for the suggested error, thus believing in the reality of the evil. How can we reject error while listening to its false arguments? We should follow the example of our Master, and rebuke error as decisively as he did when he said to his tempter, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

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