In the light of Christian Science the often misinterpreted Scripture passage, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth," finds a satisfactory explanation. We come to see that the son is chastened until he awakes to full consciousness of the Father's tenderness and care; until in fact he awakes to the realization that in his true, spiritual selfhood he is indeed a son, and takes upon himself the duties and privileges of sonship. So long as earthly pleasures allure and earthly pains dismay, he is wandering in a dreamland of his own, and it is needful to his well-being that these pleasures should elude his grasp and these pains inflict their penalties upon him, if he elects that suffering shall be the teacher.
Experience along spiritual lines sooner or later leads all men to the perception that nothing brings happiness except obedience, right thinking, and faithful and loyal conduct. This discovery is not new to any creed or to any individual, but it is intensified and given new direction in the light thrown by Christian Science upon man's true relationship to the Father. The great change in outlook which this revelation introduces is the understanding that the evil apparent in human character, or in its effects as witnessed on the human body, is not the formidable reality which it has always been regarded as being, but is a delusion, a lie, something not to be fought but seen through.
Speaking on this vital point, Mrs. Eddy says, "Our only departure from ecclesiasticism on this subject is, that our faith takes hold of the fact that evil cannot be made so real as to frighten us and so master us, or to make us love it and so hinder our way to holiness" (Message for 1901, p. 14). Having once unreservedly accepted this statement as true, he who would prove it has from henceforth but one enemy to deal with, namely, the endeavor of mesmeric mortal belief to force him back into the persuasion which has obtained for centuries,—that there is another power besides God, good. When he has entered upon this struggle with a lie almost endless in its ramifications, the Christian Scientist is likely to be reminded of the psalmist's words, "Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him," words which most fitly apply to the healing message which must now be carried to a world not yet alive to the hope and fulfillment it brings.
