WE hear many testimonies at the Wednesday evening meetings which tell of the hopelessness of the speakers before coming into Christian Science. It is one of the greatest of the works of Christian Science to restore this lost hope by bringing to the sinful and suffering the understanding that all help is in God, and the knowledge that with such omnipotent help, always and everywhere present, none need be without hope. The realization of omnipresent divine Love has cheered and comforted many a suffering soul and replaced despair with everlasting hope. It is only those who are "without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise," that are or can be without hope, and who are "without God in the world."
The Bible is full of expressions of hope based upon reliance on God as man's help, his refuge and his fortress. Of old the psalmist said, "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help. whose hope is in the Lord his God." Paul says, "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why cloth he yet hope for?" The worker in Christian Science sees with joy the dawn of this new hope in the sufferer who has been looking not to the God of Jacob but to material means for his help. This sense of hope and trust in God lifts and purifies the thought, and brings to the hearts of men such good cheer and happiness that it shines forth in their countenances like sunshine breaking through the clouds. It is the light of Truth and Love dispelling the darkness of error, doubt, and distrust. It brings joy and gladness not only to the beginner in Science whose eyes are thus opened, but to the one who is instrumental in helping him to this understanding.
In no one thing does the Christian Science method of healing differ more from that of materia medica than in this elevation and purification of thought and the uplifting inspiration of hope in the patient; and in no one instance is it more conspicuously noticeable than in the case of so-called incurable diseases. In such cases the patient is hopeless because he is made to understand that the influence of medicine and the skill of the physician are powerless to save him. How different when he is brought to understand that God is his help, and that to Him nothing is impossible; therefore that there is no incurable disease. With this assurance hope springs into life; fear, the great enemy of man, is dispelled, and healing follows. Thus is Christian Science the harbinger of peace.
