The earnest reader of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy finds that the teaching on every page of this textbook of Christian Science tends to lift thought away from the seeming conditions cognized by the material senses, towards spiritual reality.
The mental quality of hope implies the expectation of good, however much doubt and distrust may overshadow it. Hope has ever been regarded as indispensable to the welfare of mankind. In the Greek legend, Pandora shut down the box lid before hope escaped, and thus, supposedly, saved consolation for the human race against the pessimistic beliefs attendant on the assumption of gods many.
Paul placed hope among the three greatest things to be sought after. "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three," he said; "but the greatest of these is charity." And later in the same epistle he wrote, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." Then he strives to lift the thought of his readers to the apprehension of their unity with God in Christ Jesus. It is this higher hope, taught by the great apostle, but dimmed by centuries of changing creed and ritualism, which came to the world with new meaning through Christian Science.
