FEW arguments confront the neophyte in Christian Science more persistently than that of the difficulty of his situation as compared with the position of another. He has traveled well along the way when he gains the realization that it is his problem to translate his immediate environment into spiritual terms, not necessarily to translate himself into a new environment. The voice from the burning bush is calling now, as ages ago it called to Moses, "The place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
This opportunity, freely given to all, is a beautiful one if utilized by the student who is the mother of a family when Christian Science enters into her experience. She may be much occupied with "the care of this world" which threatens to "choke the word," received in her glimpses of Truth. She may look longingly at her neighbor whose leisure gives unlimited opportunity for study and meditation. But, as with all others, the mother's great blessing unfolds when she realizes her opportunity to apply ceaselessly what she has learned of Truth. It is only by demonstration of each idea perceived that a foundation is laid for further growth. Without proof, study avails little. Hers is a never ending necessity to apply an understanding of God and of man's eternal sonship. Realizing that all true human relationships in some measure reflect divine reality, she undertakes to translate her relations to her family into spiritual terms. Each day may present various claims of mortal belief by the reversal of which she sees, beyond the material concept, the ever present spiritual man.
With the world in general she has regarded a child as an individual expressed in a material body, belonging to his father and his mother until he has attained the years of his majority. In consequence, her thoughts may have been turned chiefly, if not wholly, to the material sustenance and care of these little ones. She has been instructed that they must be carefully watched, weighed, guarded as to temperature, and reminded of many so-called material laws claiming to govern physical existence and growth. But as an understanding of real being unfolds in her consciousness the mother learns to regard these little ones from a different point of view. She learns that God is the only cause and creator, the only Father-Mother, and that the real man is His divine idea. She learns that what she has regarded as her children are in reality the children of the one Father-Mother God. This God knows His children not as material, but "in righteousness and true holiness," as spiritual, right ideas.
