TEN years ago the writer was wandering in a maze of doubt and fear. It was a time of mental perplexity and physical suffering. If he could but have seen that it was also a time pregnant with future peace and spiritual joy, what a difference the outlook would have presented! The very restlessness and hunger betokened prospective satisfaction.
It is only indifference or cold content, in relation to either the spiritual or material, which is hopeless. The intense longing which is manifested in activity and research, the determination to achieve and possess, knows nothing of dull listlessness, it is alert and optimistic; but the condition of thought which is typified in the Master's words as walking "through dry places, seeking rest," and yet finding none, is hemmed around with mental darkness. Such a stage of experience may, however, be chastening and educative, even though it is painful; but it is the pain of heart that forces the cry for help, the darkness that impels the desire for light,—the condition of a soul bereft of that spiritual rest which is a normal possession of the spiritual man, and which is invariably found at last, though the search may be long and at times apparently hopeless.
Every Christian Scientist knows something of the relation between mental and physical trouble. To others this relation is undetected; hence the searcher for physical health, seeing from the material standpoint alone, is ignorant that it is his spiritual hunger and restlessness which need to be satisfied, his misconceptions of the basis and source of all spiritual blessedness which need to be removed, before he can attain the desire of his heart. He is working in a wrong direction; his whole concept of life in its only true sense needs to be transformed; but starting on an erroneous basis, and hampered by the limitations of early false teaching, what a weary search it is! And yet what lessons are to be gathered from it, if the experience can be interpreted aright and its results woven into the warp and woof of future demonstrations.
