The invalid, in his earnest yet sometimes wavering endeavor to obtain surcease from sickness and distress, has sought out many inventions, but not one of them has relieved him from the hopeless task of looking to material effects as an explanation for a result wished for but not attained. Still it is easily believable that in turning to a possible method of cure one would be solicitous to avail himself of any reasonable means leading to this desirable end. This is noticeably the case with one who looks to Christian Science for relief. If there is not an immediate improvement in the general condition of the patient, he is apt to begin to grope among material manifestations for a probable solution to his lack of response, and for want of a better excuse entertains many silent as well as audible suggestions that Christian Science is not doing for him what he had been led to think it might and would do.
Let us picture a stream of water, pure as crystal, breaking through the silent wooded depths of a great forest, and then dwell for a moment upon the countless years and seasons after seasons that this stream has been flowing along in its limpid clearness. Miles farther on through the moorland and across the fens, another stream, very muddy and impure, empties into it. There is a momentary clash and a swirling of the mingling waters, the surface again becomes unruffled, but not far below the confluence the current has assumed a dirty, forbidding aspect. Would it be of any avail, in seeking a way to cleanse the waters below the confluence, to find fault with the liquid clarity of the current far up in the woodland? In fact would it not be a physical absurdity to attempt to purify the stream below the confluence, so long as the inflow from the muddy lowlands was greatly in excess of that coming from the forest reaches? No amount of ingenious calculating or intricate engineering could rid that stream of its muddy appearance while three fourths of its input was mud and dirt. There would be just one course to pursue to arrive at a practical result,— either the inflow of the muddy water would have to be cut off at the confluence, or its proportion reduced so that it would fall below that of the current coming from the woods.
In seeking a satisfying reason as to why we are not always healed at a time and in a manner we had perhaps outlined for ourselves, may not our mental state be likened to the channel of the muddy stream at the confluence? Perhaps our burden of sickness may have grown heavier; there may have been an accession rather than a diminution of perplexities; unexpected complications may have developed, and a weight of discouragement may be bearing us down as a consequence of our slight prospects; and we are tempted to admit, tacitly at least, that our condition seems to be getting worse rather than better under Christian Science. We are looking down into the muddy stream, and the longer we contemplate it the more deplorable the situation seems to be, with less likelihood of our improving it.
