TRIALS are sometimes found to be preparatory schools, whose exacting curriculum and rigid discipline make for higher learning and accomplishment. These schools are so equipped as to purge each and every student of his ignorance of Principle, of indifference to Truth, of selfishness, unkindness, stupidity, and carelessness. Trials are under-tests in the study of hard lessons, which examine the learner and prove his highest worth. So uncompromising are their demands that they often seem capable of wholly dethroning one's mental upbuilding, thereby completely overpowering his cherished ideals and rendering impossible the attainment of any knowledge of real value.
Trials often array themselves as determinative influences in the destinies of mortal man. People of every clime and class are summoned to deal with them, and there is no one who is totally exempt from their presence. Throughout all history mankind have battled against fleshly tribulations. Even the career of the best man that ever walked the earth was beset by trials of the most grievous type. On every hand they loomed up as seemingly colossal barriers to his progress; and like the Master, every man and woman who has been accorded a deserved place of honor in the world of achievement, has been obliged to travel a highway blocked by seemingly insurmountable difficulties.
Christian Science offers no easy road to success. Each seeker after its truth has more or less acquaintance with daily trial. This is especially true of the young student, and for the reason that to reach the summit of Christian achievement to which he aspires, he is forced to resist the pressing claims of material sense, to strive constantly to rise above them, and to "endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." He is obliged to awake from the mortal dream of pain and pleasure in things material, to realize that God, good, is the never-failing strength of man, and that besides Him "there is none else." In the words of Browning, he must forever know that "life means learning to abhor the false and to love the true, day by day."
