IN our work as Christian Scientists we have constant need to cultivate patience and perseverance. Not alone do these virtues enrich character; they are vital to healing. As the warp and woof are interwoven to make cloth, so in Christian Science must patience and perseverance be woven into our demonstrations if we would present the fabric of them strong and enduring. In our early efforts to gain an understanding of God as taught by our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, we needed these qualities; and we need them continually as we learn to know and serve Him better.
Patience and perseverance, when rightly directed by understanding, enable us to recognize and prove God's supremacy in the face of any error which might seem to claim these very qualities to serve its own ends. Alertness and courage are closely associated with patience and perseverance, and together these four give the needed impetus to scientific endeavor, and supply a fourfold strength to keep it marching forward to victorious demonstration.
One may be faced with what is wrongly termed the return of an old belief, or the recurrence of an error which it was thought had been completely met and mastered. This is an erroneous designation; for how could that return which has been destroyed? Can the same enemy plane again fly over the front line trenches after it has been brought down in a heap to the ground? No; but it is possible for one very much like it to sail ominously across the skies, and from the same base, and demand the same careful attention that was given to the first. But it is not the same enemy plane; and so it is with a second manifestation of error. Just such situations call for alertness, courage, patience, and perseverance, which annihilate discouragement and gloom; and yet how often do discouragement and gloom seem to stultify righteous effort, so that one seems unable again quickly to find complete freedom!
