The real man never traffics with his spiritual birthright of life, freedom, harmony, and boundless good. His vision of eternal selfhood, intact, perfect, and undefiled, is never for a single moment obscured. But to human consciousness, in times of sorrow and affliction, earthly life may seem reduced to emptiness and futility. The heavy blow to pride or human material planning, dealt by business or professional reverses, may tempt with the serpent question, Is human life worth living?
But the very nature of human experience itself has more or less effectively protected human thinking against such aggressive suggestions. Religion, even in its cruder forms, has tended to provide men with a sturdy sense of the significance of life. With the coming of Christian Science the glory, fullness, and transcendent meaning of the life of the individual, coexistent with Life infinite and divine, as demonstrated by Christ Jesus, have flooded the world with radiant joy and freedom. Hence it is with a positive sense of power and authority that we can confront the basic fallacies involved in the temptation to believe that life can be taken away; that death is inevitable, or desirable, or solves anything. The dragging of these fallacies out into the light of Truth aids in destroying them. But such widespread human delusions need careful, methodical, and drastic handling.
While much that seems to transpire on this human level is an enigma, Christian Science teaches that the human sense of life is a disciplinary experience. Mrs. Eddy states positively that "earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 486). St. Paul saw through the "light affliction, which is but for a moment," as a way of getting beyond things temporal to the unseen, eternally real. There is nothing timorous or shrinking in this vigorous, upstanding apostle. "Quit you like men," he says; "be strong." And Peter's behest is not the voice of futility, passive resignation, or defeat. "Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end," he charges. Paul promises out of his own abundant life experience that we may know that our "labour is not in vain in the Lord." Human life illuminated by Christian Science is not empty, not vain, not futile or purposeless, but divinely significant, charged with glorious and constant opportunity for gaining spiritual understanding, demonstrating dominion, experiencing the joys of victory.
