Through the study of Christian A Science the Scriptures are becoming clear to me, and passages in both the Old and New Testaments which once were inconsistent, obscure of meaning, or unbelievable, have become "a lamp unto my feet." The Old Testament with its many instances of God's power to free mankind from evil conditions by marvelous deliverances, causing the sea to roll back and the enemy to be vanquished where mortal means were inadequate, I formerly regarded as mythology, for in the light of reason, as I then argued, I could not do otherwise. The New Testament with its miracles of healing seemed even less intelligible, because of unfulfilled promises from a Saviour whose life after all seemed rather in vain, being merely an exhibition of God's power to lift suffering humanity out of sin, sorrow, and sickness, a much needed deliverance which seemed to me to have been but for a limited time and a few people. So the New Testament puzzled me, and gave a sense of an unjust God who did not care to exercise His beneficent power in the world of today.
The following passage from Romans was one which brought the most vital help to me after it was understood through Christian Science: "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." "Joint-heirs with Christ" must mean that all which he was through his sonship in God, we are, and that we can call upon God at all times and in all needs, with the same immediate response from His almighty presence, love, and action; that we can love as Jesus loved, forgive as he forgave, overcome the tempter as did he, distribute plenty to the needy, and in all ways share his wonderful heritage.
If one were suddenly to pass from abject poverty into the inheritance of millions, he could not at once grasp all that it would mean to him, nor could he at once obtain complete release from all the conditions which poverty had imposed and avail himself of all the good now opened. He would find that the acquisition of money would at first enable him simply to lay hold of the grosser material good of the world. The more desirable mode of living and its graces, which wealth would make possible for him, would be reached only through education. He would first have to lay off the old sense of limitation and its influences, and learn something of the new world into which he had come. Then the acquiring of its grace would depend on his susceptibility to refinement and intellectuality and his ability to attain them. The process by which he could become a factor in this higher world of material sense would in any case be slow and full of effort for the one who had previously been inured to squalor and the unaspiring and unbeautiful aspects of life which are attendant upon poverty.
