Article April 21, 1945 Issue

Readiness

ESTHER K. MARKO

As we contemplate the perfect state of being to which we all aspire, we may sometimes be discouraged over our lack of progress in this direction. All students of Christian Science agree that trials, if rightly utilized, may serve to promote spiritual progress. Mary Baker Eddy, however, affirms in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 224), that "there should be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead of discord and death." How then is it possible to gain greater enlightenment without the suffering which usually attends human trials?

On page 49 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy supplies an answer to this question. In speaking of Christ Jesus' experience, she writes, "Forsaken by all whom he had blessed, this faithful sentinel of God at the highest post of power, charged with the grandest trust of heaven, was ready to be transformed by the renewing of the infinite Spirit." It was this readiness which was the culmination of a lifetime of obedience to Principle, of complete self-surrender and renunciation of everything pertaining to the material sense of being.

The demand to turn completely away from materiality would seem not always to be welcomed by students. Although the empty character of the sense world has been revealed over and over again, the tempter would still suggest a lingering desire to try again in what would appear to be a harmless adventure to find a fuller life, a satisfying experience in matter. Or the attempt is made to surround oneself with beauty through the accumulation of material things, which later prove a barrier to progress because of the burden they impose. Any temporizing with the modes of matter will be found a deterrent to spiritual progress.

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