THE discouraged Scientist, if he rises sufficiently from his discouragement to go to work, is liable to follow the same beaten path, forgetting that he may have mistaken his way and be quite on the wrong road; for to learn a rule to the point of mental acceptance and then correctly to apply that rule, requires an individual effort not found on the printed page. A pupil was once sent to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem in solid geometry. He was brilliant in that study, so he drew his polygon and marked off his angles and proceeded as the text-book had illustrated. At the finish his teacher asked if he understood it, and close on the pupil's affirmative response asked him to demonstrate its basic law with an opposite angle, which was not illustrated in the text. In this test the pupil failed utterly. What had he done? He had accepted the mental work of another, but had quite failed to do mental work of his own.
The demonstration of Christian Science requires something more than this mental assent; more, too, than a theoretical understanding. Like other studies, it requires application and that sequent growth on the part of the student which is the seed bringing forth fruit after its kind. Mrs. Eddy says that the failure to repeat the healing works of Jesus "arises not so much from lack of desire as from lack of spiritual growth" (Science and Health, p. 243). Let him who is battling his way out of sickness and discord with small success, deflect his thought from his inharmonies, take a mental account of stock, so to speak, and bravely acknowledge what he finds.
The frequent warning against envy, jealousy, malice, etc., is sometimes lost in the abstract, and one needs to examine not so much his acts as his impulses, to find if there be a traitor within his camp. His lips may frequently smile when his heart does not, and one may be outwardly courteous while inwardly rebellious and critical. One cannot mock the truth, however disguising the veneer, and sooner or later comes the awakening.
