NO truth-seeking student of the Christian Science textbook can have failed to reach a clear understanding that conversion, the new birth, does not signify a new status which has been brought about by a change in God's attitude toward him, the transformation results from a change in his attitude toward God.
Christian Science lays the greatest emphasis upon the inherently unchangeable nature of Deity, and finds in those Scripture passages which seem to imply that He has modified His purpose or shifted His point of view, an expression not of the facts of being, but of a mortal sense of things. Redemption is thus recognized as dependent upon the removal from human consciousness of all that is out of harmony with what Paul names "the law of the Spirit of life," and the redemptive process is, therefore, in an important sense, educational. Divine truth must be understood, accepted, and assimilated, even as the schoolboy receives and makes his very own the instruction that is provided for him, in order that the rule of right ideas, that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus." may prevail.
In the effort to reach a given type of mentality, the appeal to fear may seem to be a necessary and helpful stimulant. Christ Jesus did not hesitate, upon occasion, to refer to the terrors of the law, the inevitability of suffering for sin, but his gospel was an address to intelligence, it was Love's plea that a sense of gratitude might constrain men to learn righteousness. The fact that compulsory education is better than the reign of gross ignorance does not alter the fact that fear of the rod never has and never can beget that truly responsive attitude of mind and heart which is the prerequisite of both intellectual and spiritual progress. Without a willingness to be taught, together with that love for truth which stimulates to faithful effort, there is little promise of advance in either wisdom or righteousness.
