When Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, instituted class instruction in Christian Science she opened wide an avenue for spiritual growth that should bring untold blessings to sincere and honest students of this vast Science of Life. Of this wonderful opportunity for progress in the things of Spirit, she says in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 85), "Of this also rest assured, that books and teaching are but a ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love, upon which angelic thoughts ascend and descend, bearing on their pinions of light the Christ-spirit."

The ladder is ready and waiting, laden with heavenly messages, but the partaking of this spiritual bounty is individual demonstration. It is a choice that each one should prayerfully make for himself. There must be an awareness of the priceless opportunity class instruction can offer and a readiness to lay aside everything that might obstruct or hinder this forward step.

Christ Jesus, the great Teacher of Christianity, selected his disciples or students with infinite patience and wisdom. After his experience in the wilderness where he had prayed and fasted forty days and nights and had fearlessly withstood the three temptations of the devil, he began to select them. First he chose four stalwart, eager disciples, fired with the conviction that they had found the promised Messiah.

Important events were crowding nearer, and Jesus saw the need of drawing his chosen band more closely about him. He had much to impart to them, but wherever he went the multitudes pressed in to be healed. After his second visit to Jerusalem, the great Teacher left the crowds, and his disciples joined him in the hills above Capernaum.

We can only imagine what a glorious day that was as Jesus imparted to them things that would reveal the perfection and allness of God and their at-one-ment with the Father. So when they were all gathered about him, he began what has since been known as the Sermon on the Mount. There had been no stir of preparation for this teaching, the most glorious ever uttered. It was not a studied discourse but a natural outpouring from Jesus' heart of vital truths he felt they must know to prepare for the work that lay ahead, just as a Christian Science teacher today yearns to present to his students fundamental, life-giving truths.

Jesus began with the Beatitudes, and how these "blesseds" must have brought comfort and inspiration to his hearers as they waited eagerly for every word! A Bible commentator has designated the Sermon on the Mount as "a great architect's blue print for the building of the house of character."

And thinking of class instruction, as our Leader provided for it in Christian Science, is that not in a sense what it truly is, a "blue print for the building of the house of character"? What is character but the unfoldment of what man really is, and through class instruction we are enabled to learn and demonstrate his true being and what his relation is to the Father.

One of the great blessings which class teaching should bring to the honest and humble seeker is that of learning to know himself. He learns to evaluate and hold fast what he needs in order to strengthen his own character and to let go of what would dim or darken the true sense of Science that the teaching unfolds. This is an important step in the study of Christian Science.

We can build character and garrison it with virtue only when our real desire is to be honest, loving, and pure. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 571), "Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil." In this way we learn, as Jesus did, how to recognize the subtle arguments of the devil and how to defend our heritage as the beloved children of God.

A further blessing that class instruction should bring is learning how to study, and how to awaken in ourselves a desire to study. We must keep on learning more of the vital truths that show us the way to demonstrate this great Science which Christ Jesus demonstrated and taught to his disciples. It would be impossible to have a true understanding of Science locked up within one's heart and never demonstrated. It has to be lived and shared.

The coming of Christian Science into our lives is like the dawn, but we cannot linger there. The early light has come but not the effulgence of its full glory. In a message to the May Class, 1905, Mrs. Eddy wrote (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 254): "Beloved:—I am glad you enjoy the dawn of Christian Science; you must reach its meridian. Watch, pray, demonstrate. Released from materialism, you shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint." And through class instruction we look for this blessing of learning more definitely how to "watch, pray, demonstrate," thus of reaching the meridian.

Through the blessing of class instruction, we should receive the incentive to keep on studying and progressing, to learn how not to become lax and apathetic, not to neglect the great mission of spreading Christian Science as Mrs. Eddy has established it. Through loving and wise counseling, one is propelled to higher heights of spiritual attainment.

How necessary it is to realize that merely reading the words of this God-given and God-inspired Science is not actually studying it ! Expectancy must always accompany our study, the expectancy that some new and deeper revelation will unfold. This Science is for the ages, and only the smallest part compared with all that is there to be assimilated has as yet been demonstrated.

And this is true of our study of the Scriptures. We must never read with a closed mind, thinking, "Oh, I know all that," and then skip along quickly without an awakened thought that guides to spiritual heights. The earnest study of the Scriptures and of this Science opens the human mind to receive and to retain, spiritualizes its concepts, enlarges its capacity. We must ever keep in thought that the Bible and Science and Health are irrevocably joined together.

When we learn to study in this way, learn to partake of the angelic thoughts ascending and descending on this "ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love," we shall not deviate from Science or adulterate it, but we shall cherish, protect, and carry out its healing mission.

So great is the demand to keep the purity of our Leader's spiritual exegesis that more far-reaching demonstrations will be made as a matter of course. The great Teacher instantaneously healed multitudes and even raised the dead. So did our Leader do instantaneous healing work. There are today outstanding instances of healing, but there need to be more, many more, of the instantaneous kind.

A further blessing that can come from class teaching is gained from participating in the yearly meeting of the association formed from the students of each teacher. This meeting continues the spiritual reminders to keep alert and inspires one to follow the call to progress up the path that leads Christward.

What greater challenge to progress and to keep on progressing can we have than the one the Master gave to his students on that day in the hills of Capernaum when he commanded them, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:16)! They must watch, they must pray, they must demonstrate, not for their own glory but for the glory of the Father.

No higher goal can be raised, no firmer command can be spoken; but to attain this goal demands constant, undeviating steps Christward. And Jesus set the highest one of all when he commanded (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

All through his ministry the great Teacher kept reminding his students of the truths he had imparted to them, and he exhorted them to continue to follow his admonitions if they would be called his disciples. There could be no deviation from, no transgressing of, the Christly rules for living that he had given them. They must be obedient followers. Likewise, progress is the spiritual demand of Christian Science today. We cannot heedlessly rest on our oars, or else we may drift into dangerous waters or be caught on treacherous rocks or be hurled into the rapids of mortal beliefs. We must watch, we must pray, we must demonstrate, and class teaching is designed to show us how.

In Science there is no such thing as merely marking time. If we are not going forward, then we are slipping backward. And is that not what may be happening to some students who were fired with the zeal and love of Christian Science when they first experienced its dawn in their lives, and then in later years wondered why they did not get more out of their study? They may not be using the charts and mental tools with which Mrs. Eddy has so wisely supplied us. Our charts may have become torn and indistinct, our tools rusty from disuse; but we can mend those charts, refurbish our tools, and go forward more determined than ever to press on, for progress is imperative; and either here or hereafter we must reach those higher heights of spiritual understanding.

A further blessing that can come from class instruction is that of learning how to change obstacles into stepping-stones of progress, how to rebound quickly when adversity would pull us down, how to turn from discouragement and extract the blessing that is hidden therein. Even if we seem to miss the way, our charts will show us how to retrace our steps and find the true course. There is no circumstance or condition that can deter us from the upward course if we are ready and willing to meet and master every untoward situation with Truth.

Every sincere seeker of Truth can find the blessings today from the "ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love," the opportunity to have class instruction and reach higher heights of spiritual understanding. Then it will be as we read in Proverbs (9:9, 10): "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."