The Bible records that the Apostle Peter once said (Acts 10:34), "God is no respecter of persons." In the light of Christian Science we see that the love of God is impartially bestowed upon His entire creation, including man. We also learn that the power of divine Love, which is manifested humanly in the healing of sin, disease, and death, is brought into our experience not through personal ability or tense struggles, but through growth in grace. It is only through our reflecting the Christlike qualities of humility, obedience, and unselfed love that we are fitted to experience grace, defined in a dictionary as "enjoyment of the divine favor."

When the light of the Christ, Truth, appeared to the humble and receptive thought of Mary Baker Eddy, there began to dawn in human consciousness the realization of a divine power capable of meeting every possible human need. This is the power of the Christ, which is made available through the study and application of Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science. It enables every individual, regardless of his status, to follow in the footsteps of the Master and to work out his own salvation in the way Jesus pointed out.

Jesus showed mankind that the true way of salvation from all human ills is not obtained through willful outlining or the selfish endeavor to use spiritual means for achieving material ends. Through his perfect example he proved that only by growth in grace, by daily Christlike living, can the saving divine power be demonstrated. It was through grace that Jesus, the perfect embodiment and expression of the Christ, Truth, reflected the divine power. Referring to the power of the Christ, or Word of God, John wrote in his Gospel (1:14), "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

Christian Science, which is based on the life and precepts of Christ Jesus, teaches that today every individual can follow the example of the Master and demonstrate in a degree the living power of the Christ, "full of grace and truth." The Christ reveals the perfect man, harmonious and immortal, and the realization of this truth brings harmony into our human experience.

Although it is necessary to demonstrate harmony in all the minutiae of our human affairs, we learn in Christian Science that what is called material existence is but a temporal dream, a mutable mental picture entertained by a suppositional consciousness, or mortal mind. We also learn that all reality is in God, divine Mind, and that His idea, man, is now spiritual and perfect. Consequently, at all times our real need is for growth in our understanding of the spiritual and eternal facts of being.

This growth is acquired only through prayer, prayer which is not a desire for material gain, but rather a deep inner desire for humility and for willingness to accept the Christ, Truth, and to live it in daily life. As Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 4), "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds."

The desire to reflect God, good, is prayer that never goes unrewarded. In the proportion that we put our prayerful desire into practice shall we grow in grace and experience in an ever-increasing measure Love's infinite beneficence. True substance is spiritual and is gained not by possession but by reflection. Paul, in his second epistle to the Corinthians (9:6, 8), endeavored to convey these truths when he wrote: "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. ... And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work."

A long fear-laden struggle to achieve good outside ourselves implies the absence of good, whereas acknowledgment of the allness of God, good, and of the perfection of man as God's reflection, promotes receptivity to good here and now. Unavailing human struggling is then replaced with gratitude and joy, which enable us to grow in grace—in the joyful acceptance and reflection of omnipresent good.

Only God is good, and true goodness is therefore impersonal. Similarly with grace, through which the divine goodness is experienced. Grace is not a personal virtue or an acquired manner. Grace is a spiritual quality. It illustrates the coincidence of the divine and the human in which the activity of God is manifested in our human experience.

Growth in grace is not dependent upon human circumstances, environment, age, or climate, nor upon intellectual cleverness, material achievement, popularity, or success. To grow in grace is to grow in the conscious realization and demonstration of divine Truth right where we seem to be in our human experience.

The writer was once healed of a severe condition of malnutrition through realizing that his real need was for growth in grace through reflecting the qualities of divine Love. In this connection he was reminded of Paul's struggle to overcoming a certain difficulty and of the way in which the apostle's prayer was answered by the words (II Cor. 12:9), "My grace is sufficient for thee."

In her Message to the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church in 1896 our Leader points out the prayerful and scientific approach to God which enables us to grow in grace. She says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127): "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it isnot given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,—even that joy which finds one's own in another's good."