BEGINNERS in the study of "this inexhaustible subject—Christian Science" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 84) display differences in their manner of approach. The first steps taken in this realm of thinking may be halting, indecisive, stumbling ones, or eager and progressive; or they may be attended with anxious effort. They depend somewhat upon one's motive in taking them; and one has also to reckon in no small measure with the background of human experience from which one is emerging. This background may seem to be "for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence," or it may serve as a definite and valuable aid because of the useful habits which it has developed. But in every variety of human experience there are elements which must be revalued, and, after this process of appraisal, either rejected or made subordinate to the new purpose.
There is a type of background which presents specific problems to be solved. It is that setting of human experience in which human intellect and its accessory, mere academic education, play a leading part. The new impact of Christian Science brings about a revolution in human thought, a revolution tempered and moderate with some, radical with others. For those whose habits have been molded solely by intellectual ambition the process may be stormy. They may have some sharp lessons to learn as they cross the threshold of Christian Science. They have to learn that the things they have deemed superior, if not supreme, are secondary and incidental, even of insignificance significance, when compared with the superlative value of the new-found truth. Should they have desired to rank among "the wise and prudent" of this world, they must study to become babes in Christ, to whose awakening intuition the Father reveals His secrets. Often this change from the material to the spiritual standpoint appears to be a wrenching process, for it seems difficult for those who have exalted false intellectual attainment to "become as little children;" that is, to exchange adult complacency for childlike dependence on God.
The Apostle Paul knew the strength and tenacity of this conflict of the material against the spiritual. He had been brought up in Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers." He had, one may assume, graduated from that school a cultured, self confident scholar. Overtaken by a vision of Christ on the Damascus road on his self-appointed mission of persecution, and blinded by the intensity of the spiritual vision, in the confusion of his thinking he had at first to be led by the hand. Later, as his sight cleared and he perceived something of the import of his tremendous experience, especially its irrevocableness, he departed into Arabia, there to deal with his problem, to adjust his past material training to his present spiritual illumination, and to determine the implications of his changed conviction. It must have been a radical process, lasting, we are told, for about three years; but it transformed Saul of Tarsus into Paul the apostle, the Jewish intellectual into the illumined servant of Christ, who could say from his heart, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." And it gave the world, through his inspired reasoning and vitalizing language, those epistles which interpreted to the Gentiles the life of the Master and the purpose of Christianity.
