WITH all their sarcastic queries and faultfindings, their criticisms and imputations, always daring and ofttimes cruel, Job's friends said not a few true things. Moreover, they sometimes spoke far better than they knew,—a virtue into which advisers not infrequently stumble,—and a good instance of this is found in the words of Eliphaz, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God], and be at peace."
Here is a bit of counsel which is ever pertinent and practical; it has undiscovered riches of meaning that still challenge the exploration of Christian thought. Here is the cure for every human ill, and Christ Jesus but reaffirmed it when he declared that a knowledge of "the truth" would make men free. To study to know God is to begin with the fundamental, fashioning fact; it is to lay that sure foundation without which there can be no stable building; it is to disclose the secret of spiritual quickening and of all true success.
Christian Science declares not only for the possibility of this knowledge of God, but for its naturalness and necessity as antecedent to the gain of all right ideas. In Science and Health (p. 339) Mrs. Eddy epitomizes its teaching in these words: "The basis of all health, sinlessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely believed, but it must be understood."
