The incident found in the nineteenth chapter of Matthew, of the young man who asked of Jesus, "What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?" and when given the answer "went away sorrowful." is a graphic example of the fruitless search for salvation without sacrifice of false gods. The echo of the young man's query takes form frequently in the plaintive, "Why am I not healed now?" of those who, like this young man have "many possessions" from which they hesitate to part. To them, also, comes the word which answers the query, and it is for them In weigh the realization of eternal life against the possession of envy, greed, vanity, pride, hate, and other treasures of Adam.
Very often the first healing we experience in Christian Science, following instantly on the release from fear and ignorance of God, comes with a delightful lack of personal effort, and when, later, relief from some error is delayed, a sense of self-pity or resentment often develops, to make still more remote the reign of harmony. This should be a call to arms, to use the spiritual understanding gained already against the assembling forces of material sense, but sometimes the call is unheeded, and instead one listens to the prompt suggestion of mortal mind first to question the fact of divine healing. Passing through this stage of doubt, soon dispelled by plentiful evidence of the power of the Word that cannot be denied, perhaps the next temptation is to view practitioners with a critical eye. One wonders if the practitioner, so aggravatingly undisturbed by the dark pictures we paint of our anatomy, realizes that here indeed is a ease of the kind that "goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." Most of us have at some time believed ours to be that awesome case, and it is d concerting to be told that Jesus doubtless referred to the kind of healing faith that comes through prayer and fasting from material aims and thoughts, and had no intention of classifying one disease as more difficult to heal than another.
After various practitioners have been tried, the patient is sometimes ready to look within, and to ask, "Why air I not bearing witness to the truth as I understand it?" When tie's point is reached one is ready to use the light given him. Then is the opportunity to prove whether one has understanding rather than a mere human knowledge of Christian Science. Knowledge is thus defined by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 590): "Knowledge. Evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses; mortality; beliefs and opinions; human theories, doctrines, hypotheses; that which is not divine and is the origin of sin, sickness, and death; the opposite of spiritual Truth and understanding." Understanding is demonstrable, and we really know only what we can prove. It follows that using the understanding given us, proving our faith by our works, is the one way to grow in the strength of Spirit, to "get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."
