TO many students, Christian Science presents a paradox. It has beckoned them by its promises of freedom and joy. They have experienced its beneficent effects, yet to their surprise they are not out of the wood of tribulation. Said a young beginner recently: "I cannot understand it. Just when I am progressing finely, error comes along and I am down again. What is the meaning of it?" What is it but this: "In the world ye shall have tribulation." The voice is that of the Master. Think of the words, "shall have." Is there then no escape from this? Why cannot God, who is Love, come to our help when we pray sincerely, and just lift us above all sorrow and suffering? Is He not omnipotent, and are not we His children?
These are questions hoary with age, the problem of great intellects since history began, and they can be solved only by faith and understanding. There is no occasion for discouragement, but rather for songs with a lilt of spiritual optimism,— the refrain that echoes the "good in everything," because in the beginning "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." But there is need for true thinking, for earnest meditation; the meditation, as some one has said, "akin to the sentiment of little children who listen, intent upon every syllable and passionately eager of soul, to hearth side tragedies."
We shall get at the truth, and find rest for our perturbed questionings and perhaps doubts, when we seek to understand the spiritual meaning of many familiar passages in the Bible and in the Christian Science textbook. The Science of Christianity promises nothing that it cannot fulfil. It is clothed in all the glory of immaculate perfection; but, as Mrs. Eddy says, it is a "perilous passage out of bondage into the El Dorado of faith and hope" (Science and Health, p. 559). Wherein lies the peril? Again the question arises, Why should not the path be smooth and garlanded with all that will make life gladsome and uplifting? So it is, when we have attained that spiritual sense which proportions all things aright and values all things from the standpoint of eternal Truth. But how is that to be gained?
