"The time for thinkers has come," states Mrs. Eddy in the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p.vii), thus indirectly calling attention to the fact that mankind's willingness to exercise its ability to think is prerequisite to its reception of her great discovery. Further reading of the book makes it clear that though true thought is spiritual, originating in divine Mind, one may start where he is and not fear mistakes, for the correcting of mistakes may become steps in the way of real thinking.
In our efforts to reflect God in our thinking, we not only are justified in doing, but are obligated to do, the best thinking of which we are at present capable. The persistent student of Christian Science is protected in two ways: first, by the new light which he gets from his continued study; secondly, by the constant necessity of putting what he knows into practice in overcoming the limitations of human sense. The eventual remedy, as Mrs. Eddy shows us (ibid., p.486), is to "gain spiritual understanding and spiritual sense in order to possess immortal consciousness. Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost."
Often the student's growing conviction of the truth of Christian Science seems to be challenged, on the one side by the physical and on the other by the intellectual world. On the side of the physical or natural sciences is the theory of evolution, which, when seemingly almost at the point of complete acceptance, received its greatest check from Mrs. Eddy's concept of creation, and is gradually being discredited as a tenable theory of accounting for life. On the intellectual side are arrayed the philosophies which mankind, in its gropings for light, has worked out. Some of these have caught gleams of the truth; but human reasoning, without inspiration and revelation, has been unable to go very far towards the illumination of real life, as the reflection of Life, God, or make true affirmations concerning it.
