In the familiar Scriptural account of Jacob's wrestling with an unnamed antagonist, many lessons of value to the student of Christian Science are to be found. Mary Baker Eddy makes an extended comment upon this narrative in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." She says, in part (p. 308): "Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,— struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science."
Do we, in our efforts to demonstrate Christian Science, follow the patriarch's example of insistence that our work be blessed, and continue to the point where we see and feel the spiritual inspiration of Truth actually break through the dark clouds of unbelief? It will be recalled that Jacob's fidelity to Truth, in this instance, earned for him the name of Israel. The burst of holy inspiration and spiritual light which he received, moreover, caused him to exclaim, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
Sometimes, in the long pull of our journey from sense to Soul, we are assailed by the temptation to lose our joy and inspiration. Most of us, upon finding Christian Science and seeing something of the marvelous certainty of its healing ministry, commence the study of the subject with enthusiasm. When we find, however, that the overcoming of the belief of life in matter means an inexorable struggle with seemingly deep-seated claims of human nature, sin, limitation, and so forth, and that continued progress requires the devotion of time, patience, and earnest effort, we may be tempted to allow our joy to wane. Failure to realize the importance of the work in which we are engaged, and impatience because outward results do not always appear as rapidly as and in the manner that we believe they should, tempt us to allow our ardor to cool.
