WHEN the writer first turned to Christian Science for help, in a time of great need, it was the practical nature of the teaching which struck her most forcibly and impelled her earnest attention. The vague hypotheses, the conflicting opinions, the varied doctrines of false theology, had long since changed her childhood's acceptance of what she was told in religious matters to doubt and unbelief. The result was many years of quiet indifference to religion, although at times there was a yearning for spiritual understanding. When, later, some of the leading truths of Christian Science were unfolded to her, she grasped the fact that it was a religion to be lived and proved every step of the way.
Mary Baker Eddy's statements are illuminating. She writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 182), "The demands of God appeal to thought only;" and again (ibid., p. 116): "Works on metaphysics leave the grand point untouched. They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies,—even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death."
When students of Christian Science realize something of the unceasing activity of God, good, and strive to turn away from the all too constant claims of error to be real and to have power, they are treading the only path of progress. It is as we put into practice, little by little and day by day, God's law of loving service and self-forgetfulness that we are able to rise somewhat out of old material beliefs and habits, of both thought and act.
