MANY articles have been written to express gratitude for the help afforded by the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon, but there is still opportunity to voice an appreciation of one particular view of the Quarterly, and that is, for the fresh interpretation offered us each week on a subject chosen by Mrs. Eddy as a key-note for the Sunday service.
In philosophy there are two great methods of reasoning, one by deduction and the other by induction. Quite naturally and logically these two methods are employed in our metaphysical work. By deduction we affirm that because God is good, all that emanates from His thought must necessarily partake of His nature; by induction we state that goodness being recognized, even as an ideal, its origin can be ascertained, and demonstrated as a fact by tangible proofs which lead back to the cause itself.
The omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God is a premise in Christian Science from which all spiritual facts can be deduced, and the assertion of this premise is often made either in the golden text or in the responsive reading, sometimes in both. The inductive method is used in the six sections into which the Lesson is divided, to show that the preliminary assertion of God as the only power can be proved by the presentation of certain incidents, gathered from the Bible, which demonstrate the presence of a spiritual cause from which they proceed. The interest this arouses gives a sure sign of the vitality of Christian Science. Quite contrary to general opinion, the study of spiritual things should be interesting, so as to hold the attention, "rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas" (Science and Health, p. 583).
