For ages, mankind generally has accepted a material sense of life and happiness. It looks to the physical body for life and health, and to material possessions, personal friends, and material pursuits for happiness; and this undoubtedly accounts for all the discord, disappointment, insecurity, and uncertainty in the world.
An aggressive phase of this insecure and uncertain sense of existence is the fear of loss. Mankind seems to be constantly in fear of losing something good. For instance, it is commonly believed that health, harmony, possessions, supply — yes, life itself—can be lost. All these, it is falsely reasoned, may be lost because they are dependent on matter and material law. This material sense of uncertainty seems to threaten at every turn. So long as we regard life and happiness as dependent on matter, this fear cannot be overcome. It is sometimes submerged when material conditions seem to be harmonious, but the latent fear remains, ready to spring into action on any occasion.
Many before accepting Christian Science find themselves in this state of insecurity and uncertainty, human means having failed and disappointed them. They reach out in their extremity for that which only God, through His Christ, can supply. At the threshold of their study of Christian Science, some are assailed by the aggressive suggestion that if they accept Christian Science, something regarded as humanly good must be given up, lost. It is faith in material values and in material ways and means which seeks to confuse the beginner with this false sense of fear. Others, perhaps, having taken the first steps along this new way, are aggressively assailed by doubt and the fear that maybe they will lose with God. In this instance, the young student is still entertaining a false sense of God and a false sense of values, and is not yet fully aware of man's true relationship to God and of true substance. Christian Science, when properly understood and applied, does not take away anything good. On the contrary, it preserves the true sense of good and brings into human experience the evidence of good where there has seemed to be an absence, loss, or lack of good.
