WRONG material conditions are indicative of wrong mental conditions. And these wrong mental conditions are obstructions which impede our progress, and which must be removed in order that we may continue our journey Spiritward.
One may have been an earnest student of Christian Science for many years, may have made considerable progress in overcoming sickness and sin, and yet may find that little seems to have been accomplished in overcoming some outstanding condition which requires correction. It may be frequent lack of employment, or, possibly, stagnation in business, it may be failure to secure a permanent healing in some direction, or it may be a moral problem, some old habit or mental state, which has not been overcome.
Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 462), "Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin." And she adds, "This branch of study is indispensable to the excision of error." And on page 242 of the same work she says: "Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."
