CHRISTIAN SCIENCE raises the standard of our expectancy and adds to it a tone of spiritual confidence and joy, because, as Mrs. Eddy points out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 426), "When the destination is desirable, expectation speeds our progress." What is this desirable destination? It is nothing less than the demonstration of man's God-bestowed perfection and harmony. We should, then, never entertain suggestions of mental languor and discouragement, or believe that the high hopes with which we started out in Christian Science in quest of health and regeneration have gradually drooped under the pressure of delayed demonstration. Not to mortal sources, but to immortal resources, does the Christian Scientist look for his endurance, faith, and fidelity.
Paul's statement, "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God," gives us the basis of fruitful expectation. Not on mortal fallibility, but on the infallible God and on spiritual man's perfection, does the Christian Scientist rest his stable expectation. In proportion as human consciousness clings to facts, it is liberated from falsity.
On page 46 of "Unity of Good" our Leader writes, "The scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and source of being." The question is, Do we, as God's witnesses, invariably hold fear, doubt, sorrow, impurity, in subordination to confidence, faith, joy, and purity? If, on analysis, we find our expectancy of victory lacking vigor, let us see whether the mortal rather than the "manifestation of the sons of God" holds the center of the stage in our thinking. Do we always strive to prove that error is subject to Truth, matter to Spirit, selfishness to unselfed love? Are we, to the very best of our understanding, subordinating the material to the spiritual? Or do we, through arguing for the reality of the unreal, drift with the currents of materiality and even, in moments of panic and infidelity, back water, slip back into mortal ways of thinking? If so, we can and should reverse the process and again row forward in God's strength. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Our progress will be continuous as we voice, even under difficulties, the truth as to the actual and harmonious "manifestation of the sons of God," and identify ourselves with it.
