In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our Leader writes (p. 426): "The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughts, than when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it. When the destination is desirable, expectation speeds our progress. The struggle for Truth makes one strong instead of weak, resting instead of wearying one." The beginner in Science asks, What is the goal? In her books Mrs. Eddy has made reply to this question again and again. As one answer, the writer has chosen the following from Science and Health (p. 472): "God is to be understood, adored, and demonstrated." This declaration sometimes came as a shock to the old scholastic thought. The devout Christian adored what he considered to be God, but he did not understand God; and the proposal to "demonstrate" the Almighty would have seemed as sacrilegious as mystifying to him, chiefly because Deity had been conceived by him to be a limited personality. But when God is presented as the infinite divine Principle of man, the possibility of demonstrating or proving the truth about divine Principle begins to dawn as a possibility; and, moreover, the comprehension and practice of Christian Science unfolds the fact that man's divine Principle is demonstrable.
This, too, is sometimes a perplexing proposition to the beginner; and his next query may be, What are the footsteps leading to this high goal, and how are they possible to mortals? That they are possible, and that this is being daily exemplified, is well known to thousands of people, proving that God never requires the impossible, and that He makes the same requirement of every one: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Our great privilege is to learn what these tithes are, and how to bring them all in to prove the relation of man to God, and God's beneficent government and blessing, so abundant that there shall not be room to receive it in human consciousness; but, in proportion as the human shall have dissolved in presence of the divine, the spiritual expression of God's boundless love and care will appear.
As explained in Christian Science, the Principle of man and the universe is the infinite creative and governing divine Mind. Now, the only conceivable creation of Mind is idea; and man, the exact image of Mind— according to Scripture—is, logically and inevitably, the highest idea of creation, the individualized reflection of all the qualities and power of creative Mind; hence, as we demonstrate man, he will be brought into view and found to be possessed entirely of the divine nature. Such a manifestation, even in part, points unmistakably to man's divine source, and prophesies the complete supplanting of the limiting belief in material personality.
