THOSE who turn to Christian Science for healing after other methods have failed, usually vary greatly in their mental attitude toward this method of establishing good in human experience. Some expect to be healed immediately; others accept its ministrations merely because there is nothing else for them to do; while there are those who, though quite willing to try it, as they say, have little or no faith in its teachings.
Every practitioner is confronted with the question "Why?" uttered by those who, studying diligently and obediently, seem strangely slow in attaining their freedom. Is it not sometimes because they are looking for some external thing to happen, not realizing that it is through the renewing of their own consciousness that the kingdom of all good will be revealed? Every one must learn to govern the stream of thoughts which seems to run riot continually in his mentality, and through the power of discrimination to hold fast to the good and reject the bad.
Thus one comes to know that the true kingdom of God is to be found in each individual, in accord with the words of the Master, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Commenting upon these words, Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 576): "This kingdom of God 'is within you,'—is within reach of man's consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it. In divine Science, man possesses this recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to his understanding of God." Then it is a process of emergence, a revealing of that which is within, an awaiting the removal of the accumulated rubbish of wrong thinking, which years of ignorance as to the reality of Spirit have seemingly upbuilt. The way of freedom is ever the way of self-surrender, discarding anything and everything that would darken a genuine perception of the Christ.
