IF home conditions are not idealistic, they should become so through the application of Christian Science. We may not accomplish this work in a day or a year, but it can and will be achieved as we unselfishly desire it and keep always before us the standard of perfection. If at times the way seems long and difficult, continued honest endeavor will lift our thought to a higher spiritual altitude, clarify and exalt our purpose. Mrs. Eddy assures us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 126) that "trials lift us to that dignity of Soul which sustains us, and finally conquers them." Let us remember that those who understand Christ, Truth, must lift it up in the home. Upon them rests the responsibility of holding high the standard of Truth. This blessed privilege is theirs by reason of the more advanced spiritual thinking which Christian Science is teaching them to maintain.
Certainly every Christian Scientist should help to establish healed, happy homes—homes that are havens of refuge to all who abide in them, ideal places of refreshment and rest, and of joyous, helpful associations. In their homes Christian Scientists have every reason to be humble with kindly service, strong with the united vigor of spiritual thinking, and bright with shining thoughts of the goodness of God.
On pages 12 and 13 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 our Leader, in exposing the falsity of evil, has given us knowledge which serves as a working basis upon which evil may be so detected and excluded. She says: "Evil is neither quality nor quantity: it is not intelligence, a person or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it." Again she says, "Christian Science lays the axe at the root of sin, and destroys it on the very basis of nothingness." When, as Christian Scientists, we whole-heartedly accept and apply the premise here laid down, we shall learn to clear our homes of dissension and strife. But is it not too often true that in considering home difficulties we are prone to believe that the trouble lies with some person, place, or thing? Do we not accord to evil some quality, quantity, and intelligence, and then attempt to combat it as if it were real? It may even be that our zeal in opposing what appears to be evil in person, place, or thing at times exceeds our calm and holy contemplation of the spiritual facts about man and being.
