SOMETIMES Christian Scientists remark on how difficult it would be for them to continue facing the problems of human existence without an understanding of Christian Science. At such times they are remembering the days that are gone, and thinking of the mystery of existence as it then appeared to them; they are dwelling in thought on the struggles they had with the beliefs of sickness and sin, and other forms of evil. In those days good and evil, love and hate, were alike real to them. In consequence, a heavy cloud often seemed to hang over them—the cloud of corporeal or material sense, which nothing appeared to be capable of dissolving.
When Christian Science came to them, the truth it taught began immediately to dissipate the cloud. It brought to them a great revelation of true being, of reality—God and His spiritual creation; and the revelation at once began to make clear to them the unreal nature of all the suggestions of material sense. That was the beginning of the dissolving of the clouds of corporeality. How vivid still, to those who, perhaps many years ago, accepted the truths of Christian Science is the sense of peace and joy they experienced when they understood that because God is infinite Spirit, perfect Mind, His creation of spiritual ideas is spiritual and perfect! In the light of the revelation they beheld the utterly illusory nature of material sense, and saw its supposititious clouds disappearing, even as the mists of earth vanish before the warm rays of the sun.
Perhaps the hopes of the student were very sanguine in the early days of his study of Christian Science; perhaps he thought that his knowledge of real being, limited though it then was, would protect him from all the errors of material sense. If so, he failed to gauge the extent of the seeming activity of mortal mind —that supposititious mind which claims to counterfeit divine Mind. But experience teaches the honest student of Christian Science; and he soon perceived that although he might not at once rise superior to all the illusions of mortal mind, Christian Science did equip him to handle scientifically each erroneous belief as it suggested itself, and to overcome it.
