ALL who honestly pursue the study and practice of Christian Science discover that a great transformation is required on their part. However far from, or near to, the kingdom of God they may have appeared to be, they will sooner or later be rewarded by the conviction that the evil ways of the world must be wholly abandoned and God must be everywhere obeyed. Each honest seeker soon comes to know that he must give himself whole-heartedly to the work of righteousness, and that reluctance thus to follow the Christ, Truth, will inevitably result in unhappiness.
Sometimes students of Christian Science have been temporarily misled into believing they are very happy because, in attempting to apply spiritual understanding, they find their human affairs working out in a manner they regard as entirely agreeable. Too frequently they may have forgotten the need of devotedly praying, as did Christ Jesus, "Not my will, but thine, be done," and for a time have been unmindful that it is God's way for which we pray and are grateful in Christian Science. Thanks be to God, however, He will not lose one of His little ones. The allurements of mortal sense can find no abiding place in the consciousness once properly directed Godward; and the seeker who may have been misled suddenly awakens to the fact that he cannot "demonstrate," as he may call it, as formerly. Perhaps his honest, sincere efforts to demonstrate the truth of being may appear to be repeatedly reversed, something which is neither pleasant nor acceptable, and he may seem to be at a standstill. Perhaps he may not yet see in the experience the loving, merciful hand of God, who is ever mindful of His own; but at any rate he continues to pray and work on, until presently he perceives that a further preparation of the heart is required, and finds that Christian Science is fully equal to the task.
How many times have beginners in Christian Science had experiences like that just related? How many times have experienced Christian Scientists, after prolonged hours or days of faithful striving, come to know that more consecration, more humility and love, more obedience, more of the preparation of the heart, constitute the answer? How many times have they discovered that the seeming obstacle is their own unwillingness to come up higher, to cease to judge by the world's standards of health, holiness, happiness, and success, and instead to accept that which God has prepared for His children? Christian Scientists have had abundant proof that mortal aims and ambitions are no part of the preparation for spiritual demonstration. They have learned that if one is to become consecrated to God sufficiently to prove the nothingness of sin, disease, and death, he must prepare in the way God directs. "For," we read in Isaiah, "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my [God's] ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your, thoughts."
