Joy is often declared to be dependent on the prevailing conditions in one's human experience. If our lot appears to be difficult, our task toilsome, the burden of prolonged sickness or lack continually before us, it may seem easy to allow depression, anxiety, fear, and a host of other joyless and belittling thoughts to enter our consciousness and settle down there. Yet, in those moments when we have allowed the sunlight of some happy thought about a friend, a kindly act, or a loving work to enter, it has for a time dispelled the gloom, and we have found even our surroundings illumined with a warmth and happiness before unseen.

Christian Science, understood and practiced, fills our lives with joy. It makes happiness permanent, dependent on God—not occasional and fleeting, dependent on matter. It gives us the true concept of man as spiritual and free, no longer subject to material conditions of living, but subject only to the life-giving law of God, of good. This law frees from the bondage of sickness, lack, failure, or sorrow by showing us the unreal nature of this bondage.

Thus to the thought lifted in joy and gratitude to God for His glorious, perfect creation, of which man, made in the image and likeness of God, is the highest idea, sickness begins to assume a different aspect. It is seen to be but a belief in matter, claiming precedence over God, a belief occasioned through ignorance of God and of man's true, spiritual nature. And when the truth is realized, sickness disappears as naturally as mist before the morning sunshine. However heavy the mist, the warm sunshine causes it to evaporate. So does the belief in sickness melt away before a joyful acknowledgment of the allness of God, which pierces the mystification of mortal thought and dispels the belief and manifestation of disease.

The one facing lack or failure can learn that joy, founded on the understanding and certainty that man "reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker" (Science and Health, p. 475), increases his supply, and makes failure an impossibility. Ever drawing on God for a supply of spiritual ideas of love, goodness, purity, wisdom, gentleness, and strength with which to meet every human situation, he can never lack anything necessary to his welfare and happiness. Good is increased in his experience as his income of spiritual ideas is increased, and with unbounded joy he acknowledges that man is forever established in the unlimited activity of Mind!

To the sorrowing, sad, or lonely heart Christian Science gives comforting assurance that divine Love is ever tenderly watching over and providing joy and true companionship for all His children. Every moment the loving Father-Mother is pouring forth an abundance of good. One who is lonely, then, need only turn with happy thankfulness to the realization of his eternal oneness with God, to find his life filled with wonderful opportunities for sharing with others this priceless knowledge of the host of good things which Love so freely bestows on all. Can there possibly be any room for sadness or loneliness where one is thus occupying his time in the service of his fellow men? Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes on page 304 of Science and Health: "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man—governed by God, his perfect Principle—is sinless and eternal."

Through the study of the Christian Science textbook—our "key" to the Scriptures—the Bible becomes a joy-in-spring and practical guide in every sphere of daily life. Indeed, students of Christian Science find that the continual unfoldment of spiritual joy, founded on the truth contained in the Bible, must be the constant companion of all who would follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus, the Way-shower. Joy comes in rich measure with the understanding of the Christ, Truth, and the Master said, "Your joy no man taketh from you." Today the teachings of Christian Science show us that no material condition or difficult human problem has power to take away the abundance of joy and peace that is ours through knowing that good and good alone is true, and is always the rightful heritage of every man. We can claim this inexhaustible good as our divine birthright even when human problems seem most insistent, and thereby prove our dominion over the false beliefs presented by the material senses.

Whatever our career or work, and wherever we may be—in the office, the workshop, the home, on the sea or in the air—we can begin here and now to realize that joy, based on the spiritual understanding of man's inseparable unity with God, is the keynote to all success and happiness, and also our impervious armor against sin and disease. Whatever the human need, whether for health, right and progressive employment, friendship, or home, it will be met as we surrender material desires and human will, and joyfully accept as true and operative Love's law of perfection and harmony ever at hand for all.