There is scarcely a person on earth who does not expect that some day there will be a betterment of present conditions. In spite of the prevalence of crime, disease, sorrow, and manifold other disasters, hope remains undefeated, and one asks himself, What deep reason underlies an optimism that triumphs over so many reverses and survives so much despair? The answer is that hope has a definite, albeit dimly comprehended, reason or law, while despair is devoid of reason; that no divine law underlies despondency, whereas hope forms one of that inspired triad, "faith, hope, love" (Rev. Ver.), to which Paul refers. Hope is in a measure related to spiritual sense, and every time mortal thought gropes in search of an unseen God, and experiences through prayer a renewal of hope and consolation, it means that the hem of a great healing Principle has been touched, a Principle which will ultimately bring deliverance from evil to the entire human race. Hope is spiritual; despair materialistic. Hope dawns in faith, and merges through Christian Science into the progressive realization of that perfect intelligence which inspires and justifies all true hoping, namely, God, or divine Love.
Is not every mortal inwardly convinced that the confusion, the suffering, the injustice which we encounter in human existence, indicate but an unsolved problem? What a terrible tangle of thought the child's slate presents as with blurred eyes he stares at the figures that will not come right! Yet any arithmetician could quickly detect the mistakes, erase each false figure and substitute the correct one. The fundamental error in human calculation is the acceptance of evil in the name of good, ostensibly in order "that good may come of it," and this initial error permeates the sum total of mortal experience. The promise in Revelation, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes," implies something more than the passing of sorrow; it signifies that spiritual understanding, gained here on earth, is destined to lift the veil from a densely materialistic conception of life, and reveal its eternal harmony, unmarred by any belief in evil.
Many persons look for good only in what they term the "future" life. This deprives them of present harmony, for it centers thought on death as a release from all ills. If it were not for this misleading belief, mortals would undoubtedly struggle out of untoward conditions with greater energy of purpose and determination, for this expectation of release through death is causing thousands of sufferers to yield to their ills rather than to overcome them. Yet the Bible refers to death as an "enemy," albeit "the last" to be "overcome," and we read in Science and Health (p. 426) that "sin brought death, and death will disappear with the disappearance of sin." Sickness and sin will vanish from the earth before the light of Truth, and spiritual understanding holds the secret of release from all evil.
