As students of Christian Science, we are learning how to obtain our salvation from sin, disease, and death, our deliverance from every discordant condition known to humanity. Was not our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, ever busily engaged in preaching and demonstrating salvation as a practical, present possibility? He helped men to realize their God-given dominion over all the earth, and their right to be free from everything unlike good. He thereby justified his statement that heaven is not a far-off locality, but is always at hand, even an harmonious state of consciousness, within all the children of divine Love.

We find it recorded in the fourth chapter of Luke that in the very earliest experience of Jesus' ministry of glad tidings, he returned "to Nazareth, where he had been brought up," and entering a synagogue read from the book of the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." And as he sat down he gave all to understand that the time had come for the prophetic glad tidings of salvation to be fulfilled on earth, for the glorious benefit of mankind.

How clearly John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, saw and realized that salvation is something to be enjoyed without passing through the mortal experience called death when, as an exile on Patmos, he beheld that which others did not see, namely, "a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away"! Continuing in that exalted state of consciousness, he heard the voice of omnipresent Love saying: "The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Is not this same salvation proclaimed and acknowledged in this age all around the globe in the many testimonies of thanksgiving at our Wednesday evening meetings and in our weekly and monthly Christian Science periodicals, the Sentinel, Journal, and Heralds?

What a great joy it is for students of Christian Science to realize, even in a degree, that it is possible to work out one's salvation right here and now, and on the same basis as our Master worked, thereby affording unquestionable proof of the practicability of the words of the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." The writer well remembers the sense of peace and gladness which came into his heart when his eyes first rested upon the words, so full of hope and encouragement, of the first lines of the Preface to our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," written by our dearly beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." To-day! Yes, indeed, "to-day is big with blessings" for all earnest students of Christian Science! They are happy to have found to-day the way of life, the way of true salvation; because they are being saved daily from the inharmonies resulting from the belief of life in matter. They are learning that real life can be understood and enjoyed only through spiritual sense and by carefully following the rules laid down in Christian Science. They are being transformed by the renewing of their mind into a new state of consciousness, in which they are proving themselves to be the children of God and heirs to eternal salvation.

As soon as an earnest student of Christian Science perceives that salvation is a present possibility, he naturally desires to know with more certainty how it may be won, and just what is required of him in order that he may make the most satisfactory progress in attaining it. He soon finds that the salvation which Jesus taught, and which is again being taught in Christian Science, requires one to give up, little by little, every material belief, and to have no other consciousness of Life than that which is spiritual. On page 21 of the Christian Science textbook he is told that "if honest, he will be in earnest from the start, and gain a little each day in the right direction, till at last he finishes his course with joy." If he is really in earnest, he soon becomes a diligent student of Science and Health, studiously pondering its spiritual import with an open mind; he makes a careful daily study of the Bible Lessons as given in the Christian Science Quarterly; he does not permit trivial matters to interfere with his regular attendance at church services on Sundays and Wednesdays; he becomes familiar with the Manual of The Mother Church, and all the other writings of Mrs. Eddy; he reads and joyously subscribes for the Christian Science periodicals. In short, he proves that he is earnestly seeking salvation by letting nothing interfere with his blessed privilege of embracing all the opportunities for obtaining it which divine Mind has provided.

Since he has begun aright, it soon dawns upon his receptive thought that man's real life is in divine Love, and that the joy of salvation is to be found in expressing love continually in thought, word, and deed. In due time he seeks membership in some Christian Science church or socirty, where he may, through humble, obedient service, better demonstrate his gratitude for his many blessings of present-day salvation, and become of practical help to others who also are earnestly striving to enter into the "secret place of the most High." So he continues faithfully advancing step by step, proving as he goes forward man's ever likeness to his creator, Spirit, and always keeping in view the star of perfection as his guide to the paradise of present salvation, found in the mental realm of eternal harmony, in which all is joy, and discord is unknown. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 39 of Science and Health: "'Now,' cried the apostle, 'is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,'—meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future-world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life."