Article January 25, 1947 Issue

Progress, Not Problems

CHARLOTTE V. ORR

When a student of mathematics has completed his assignment for the day, he does not expect that he will never be required to work out another problem. Instead, he knows that as long as he studies mathematics he will have a new set of examples every day. He is confident, however, that he will never be asked to do any problem for which he has not been prepared; for the exercises, though designed to advance the student's knowledge of the subject, keep pace with the instruction that he has been given. Furthermore, he can be certain that every problem is possible of solution, because all the answers to the problems have already been recorded.

Similarly, the Christian Scientist should not expect that because he is studying the Science of being he will be relieved of all further necessity of meeting and overcoming human problems. Neither should he hope to resolve all his difficulties and then retire from activity. Nor yet should he fear that he is now, or may at some future time be, face to face with some unsolvable problem. Rather should he welcome the opportunity to prove what he has learned in Science by meeting and overcoming each new test of his mastery of the rules of Science.

The belief that because one has gained a victory over evil he may be permitted to rest on his laurels springs from the false theological doctrine that heaven—a place of eternal rest, absence of useful activity—is attained by death. This erroneous belief must be guarded against. A larger measure of life, not death, is the result of progress. In speaking of our human footsteps, Mary Baker Eddy writes as follows in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 66): "Trials are proofs of God's care." And on page 224 of the same book she says, "There should be painless progress, attended by life and peace instead of discord and death."

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