Nearly every beginner in the study of Christian Science sooner or later reaches the place where he lets himself become disturbed over what somebody else is doing—or not doing. This "somebody else" is usually a student of Christian Science like himself, but one who in degree of understanding is so much farther advanced that the beginner in his youthful enthusiasm has come to regard him as an infallible example for every one to follow. Perhaps it is the friend whose hand had guided his own first faltering steps along the heavenly pathway; and the words of Truth which he heard at that time were so wondrously above and beyond anything of which he had ever known, that he failed to distinguish in his thought between the message and the messenger, and exalted both alike. To be forced to admit, later on, that his angel in earthly habiliments is after all just an ordinary man or woman, humanly prone to make mistakes, is a great shock,—one so great indeed that he is seemingly compelled to pause for a moment to think the matter over and to recover if possible his mental equilibrium.
If one should chance to come upon the student just at this point in his journey, he would probably declare that it is impossible for him to proceed another step; in fact, that he seriously contemplates going back. He left the church of his fathers, it seems, to get away from just such people as this; and here they are again! From the general trend of his remarks one would naturally conclude that when he joined the Christian Science church he supposed he was uniting with a select number of persons who never under any circumstances make a mistake. He thought it was going to be a sort of heaven on earth, the place of peace for which he had longed, where everybody thought alike about everything and all agreed in wanting to do exactly the same thing at the same moment; and in this heavenly company he supposed there would be nothing more for him to do but to fold his hands and be supremely happy. Now he has discovered that his fellow workers are just human beings like himself,—not full-fledged angels of light, but apparently in all states and stages of progress. Could anything be more discouraging? Is it not also obvious that so long as Mrs. So-and-so does this and Mr. So-and-so continues to do that it will be impossible for him to do anything but sit back and be miserable?
If the fellow traveler who has come across this victim of a very common hallucination has a spark of the real Christ-spirit in his heart, he will sit down beside his friend and try to comfort him; for he certainly needs comforting, as most of us know. We can smile about it now, through the kindly perspective of the years between; but we can well remember how at the moment of our own experience it seemed to us as if the very foundations of the universe had dropped out and we had nothing left.
