THERE are times in human experience when one's motives are misunderstood, one's actions misjudged, or perhaps right efforts misrepresented. It is at such times that men turn to God in prayer and find succor. Referring to the overcoming of mortal sense, Mrs. Eddy has written (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 81, 82): "In the desolation of human understanding A correction was made in the January 1939 Journal: CORRECTION In the November Journal, page 438. First column, the word "misunderstanding" should have been "understanding," in the quotation from "MiscellaneousWritings" by Mary Baker Eddy (pp. 81, 82)., divine Love hears and answers the human call for help; and the voice of Truth utters the divine verities of being which deliver mortals out of the depths of ignorance and vice. This is the Father's benediction. It gives lessons to human life, guides the understanding, peoples the mind with spiritual ideas, reconstructs the Judean religion, and reveals God and man as the Principle and idea of all good."
Even Christ Jesus' own disciples did not fully recognize his divine nature and power until after the ascension. When he asked them whom the people believed him to be, they replied that some believed him to be one or another of the prophets. When he then asked what they themselves said of him, Peter declared him to be the Christ. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in referring to this experience, writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 137), "Yearning to be understood, the Master repeated, 'But whom say ye that I am?' This renewed inquiry meant: Who or what is it that is able to do the work, so mysterious to the popular mind?" How comforting it must have been to the Master for Peter to reply positively and correctly, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"!
Materiality cannot grasp spiritual facts; hence, centuries later, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, at first found her holy mission grossly misunderstood, subtly misrepresented, and ignorantly misjudged and maligned. Like Christ Jesus, she knew that her commission was divine, that the Father was guiding her footsteps as she demonstrated to a skeptical world the healing and saving potency of her sacred discovery, Christian Science. Only the providence of a good God could have sustained and maintained her, enabling her to present to human consciousness the pure and holy spiritual message of comfort and salvation, through the revelation of God's immutable law of perfection. Even as did the Master, she longed for humanity to see the divinity of her mission, to see that God is the sole author of all that is good, and the directing Mind in all that she did in recording her revelation and in establishing the Christian Science movement. It was therefore natural for her also to yearn to be understood; hence she said (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 264), "I even hope that those who are kind enough to speak well of me may do so honestly and not too earnestly, and this seldom, until mankind learn more of my meaning and can speak justly of my living."
