CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, in its application to the affairs of mankind, demands just such exactness in its practice as does any other science, law, or form of government. To become a Christian Scientist means to submit so unreservedly to Divine law, that this law, in its operation, shall tend continually to govern, to adjust, to purify, and to redeem the personal life, in its every minute detail.
The sufferer who turns to Christian Science for help perceives in a measure the nature and operation of the law of God, and apprehends somewhat of its promise. He is crying out for relief, and his thoughts are engrossed by two things: his need for help and the possibility of getting help. As the promise becomes assurance and the assurance grows to established fact, his healing, arouses his gratitude, convinces his reason, and stimulates his desire to investigate further that which has fulfilled so great a promise. He continues the study of the text-book, comes into fellowship with the church work, and eventually identifies himself with the movement.
All this has been spontaneous and natural, the outgrowth of gratitude for that ease of mind and body which Christian Science has given him. It is just at this stage, however, that the testing of a student begins. It is an easy matter to accept Christian Science as a beautiful and inspiring philosophy, capable of uplifting mankind, but a matter of much greater weight to make its teaching the mainspring of every thought, motive, and act. It is an easy matter to think about Christian Science,— what a beautiful thing it is, what it is doing for others, what it will do for us some day; a much greater matter to let Christian Science enter the heart and correct the life. In many communities of Christian Scientists, this phase of thought argues that there are a few good practitioners, and a great many receptive church members who are willing to depend upon these practitioners,— the major portion of a congregation upholding and believing in Christian Science, but depending upon the few to do the actual work of applying its teaching to the practical destruction of sin and disease. No clear-eyed practitioner encourages this, and no earnest beginner really desires to retard his own growth by depending upon it, but the situation develops because of the inherent traits of human nature. The only way to avoid the stagnation resulting from such conditions, is to foster the individual application of all that one understands just as rapidly as the understanding is gained. To delay in applying one's own first knowledge, limited though it may seem to be, obstructs the individual progress and eventually leads to an appeal to the activity of some other student.
