PERSISTENCY is deemed most essential to the achievement and success of any desired purpose. Based upon right resolve, it indicates the courage of conviction and the expectancy of fulfilment. In the study and demonstration of Christian Science it is especially necessary, for what purpose could be more exalted, or should more earnestly engage the attention and interest of every man and woman, than to know God aright, and to utilize this knowledge in delivering mankind from the bondage of sin and disease?
Christian Science declares that perfect divine Principle, infinite and omnipotent good, is the only reality, and the sole governor of man and the universe. This is the right basis for all demonstration in Christian Science, and it is directly opposed to the trend of mortal belief or the testimony of corporeal sense; consequently the beginner in Christian Science, in the effort to bring his thoughts into subjection to spiritual law, is ever confronted, as St. Paul says, with "another law in [his] members, warring against the law of [his] mind." If under these conditions the student finds himself believing in the supposititious knowledge of both good and evil, or admitting the seeming power of evil, he will doubtless have occasion to say again with Paul, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."
When one enters upon the holy task of working out his own salvation and proving for himself that God is the only Mind, the only intelligence, power, and law, and that man expresses this perfect Mind and is governed wholly by spiritual law, he virtually takes up the cross and begins to follow Christ, and not until then. The false corporeal senses, dependent upon the belief of life, substance, and intelligence in matter for their so-called existence, resist this recognition of spiritual supremacy, and cry out as of yore, "Let us alone ; . . . art thou come to destroy us?" It is then the student of Christian Science learns that the putting away of mortal thought which must take place before the spiritual concept of man can become dominant in human consciousness, is not accomplished at once, or without many trials of one's faith and a patient, persistent effort to overcome the educated belief in a mind apart from God.
