The student of Christian Science is progressively aware of the beauty and vigor of the language employed by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and her other writings. One passage especially impressed itself upon a student who had systematically studied Mrs. Eddy's "Prose Works." On page 204 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," she found this pithy statement: "My faith in God and in His followers rests in the fact that He is infinite good, and that He gives His followers opportunity to use their hidden virtues, to put into practice the power which lies concealed in the calm and which storms awaken to vigor and to victory."
For many days the words "awaken to vigor and to victory" rang in the student's thought. They quickened her mentally and gave added force to her metaphysical work as well as to her performance of human tasks. With the aid of the Concordances she considered words related to vigor, such as zeal, valor, courage, vehemence, and their derivatives, as well as certain opposite negative conditions, such as apathy, idleness, defeat The statement on page 446 of Science and Health, "A wrong motive involves defeat," brought home to her the importance of motive and motive power. As this study went on, there was firmly implanted in her consciousness the conviction that success in healing and other lines of endeavor is inevitably determined by the vigorous spiritual effort put forth in the right direction. Conversely, it was clear that defeat in any right endeavor may imply feebleness of effort or of faith, or mental laziness, leading one to abandon what seems to be too strenuous a task.
Lack of spiritual understanding, which prevents or delays demonstration, is sometimes traceable to lack of vigorous effort to attain this understanding. For although spiritual understanding is as natural to man in God's image as is fragrance to the rose, nevertheless this understanding is gained by the student as he diligently strives to forsake error and gain the consciousness of good. How often have Christian Scientists, earnestly studying their textbooks in the effort to solve a specific problem, had their attention caught and held by a passage long familiar but at the moment standing out vividly with new meaning! Thus they have found that in the simplest statement of absolute truth, as presented in Christian Science, there is the possibility of infinite unfoldment.
