"Of all knowledge, the wise and good seek most to know themselves,"—so declared Shakespeare, and all thoughtful men have recognized this self-knowledge as a primal necessity to all true accomplishment in being and doing. In other words, men must act intelligently if they are to express any right activity; and what does this intelligence imply but true self-knowledge? Since God is the infinite One, He must be the only Ego, and He therefore includes all selfhood. Man as His image and likeness can only reflect His perfect Being. Then man can know himself only in the proportion that he understands God. Such self-knowledge as this must be the great goal of every individual who is to find and demonstrate true existence.
It is the revelation of Christian Science which has brought the method whereby this true understanding of God and man is made demonstrable, even after the manner in which Jesus taught and practiced it. It defines God so clearly and positively that each one may immediately begin to lay hold of the letter of this Science. As he puts it into use he cannot fail to find good quickly resulting in his experience. Through the contemplation of the truth about God and man which the textbooks of Christian Science unfold, one commences to discern such an enlarged concept of what self-knowledge includes that wonderful new possibilities are revealed to him. This first vision of what God and man really are, comes as a joy and glad surprise to the mortal who has known only the false aspect of human belief as taught outside of Christian Science, and one starts out with the expectation that all is to be smooth sailing from henceforth and forever. Since he has caught a glimpse of the fact that man really belongs to God and that all of good consequently belongs to man as God's likeness, he cannot conceive of ever failing to embrace and use this understanding for his own deliverance from all evil.
However, to let this light of Life, this consuming fire of good, do its necessary work in the human consciousness by uncovering and consuming all the dross,—in other words, to let true self-knowledge uncover all the falsity of the opposite claims to a selfhood apart from Spirit, requires such devotion to God, such steadfast patience, such willingness even to go down, when needful, into the depths of temporary abasement, as shall thoroughly test one's loyalty to good. It will also purge him with the hyssop which is bitter to taste, but which must result in the purifying which shall bring victory unutterable. As Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 571), "Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil."
