One is sometimes plied with questions concerning Christian Science which it is difficult to answer satisfactorily offhand, and this may be due to the fact that no religion can be thoroughly understood with the head alone. The world has accepted various religions, not because any of them are easy solutions of the problem of the universe,—none of them are,—but because most men wish to pin their faith to some system of religious thought, and they accept that which seems to them to be the most rational. In most of these systems certain premises are easy to accept, but in all of them it must be acknowledged that some conclusions lead beyond the pale of present human experience.
This fact was objected to by a certain student of Christian Science, who did not see why he could not at once understand all the questions which the study of Christian Science raises. He said that from a perusal of some writings on the subject, he had hoped that Christian Science was '"really a clear and logical religion which required no apologies of any sort." "My mind to me a kingdom is," he quoted, and "to yield its dominion to a supposed spiritual understanding, only to be proven by the healing of certain individuals from sickness, would be an expensive exchange." He further declared that he "would rather have clear thinking combined with sickness, than an intellectual tyranny which brought a mental state of seeming health and peace."
Now the spiritual understanding referred to, which is necessary in order to comprehend Christian Science, is of course not a mere intellectual quality or power of the human mind, with which some are gifted and others are not, regardless of previous training or environment, but a certain ability to perceive spiritual intent which results from spiritual growth, from a process of unfoldment. None of us have, figuratively speaking, completely unfolded. We are all human chrysalides, so to speak; but many Christian Scientists have, through a process of right thinking and right living, succeeded in breaking through the cocoon of this world of sense impressions sufficiently to have realized, beyond any possible doubt to themselves, the verity of the spiritual life, and this realization gives to many passages in Science and Health a meaning which they do not have for those who have not had this experience.
