One of the beauties of holiness is that it demands discipline and mental alertness of those who are to achieve it. The human family, passing through great tribulation, is in dire need of repeated and convincing demonstration that holiness is attainable through divine Science. Even if not hungering and thirsting after righteousness, men hopefully scan the horizon of experience for proof that power belongs to God, good, not evil. As never before, humanity is ready to respond to practical, operative religion.
Words already deluge the world. Today, the keyword to confidence is "results." What has Christian Science to offer? Christ Jesus declared, "I have chosen you, . . . that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you." Mary Baker Eddy states in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 428): "The author has healed hopeless organic disease, and raised the dying to life and health through the understanding of God as the only Life. It is a sin to believe that aught can overpower omnipotent and eternal Life."
Spiritual power, expressed in right thinking and acting, leads to an exalted state of consciousness, won by countless victories over feeble, futile, or sinful thoughts that in endless sequence attempt to flood the human mind. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul said, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God . . . bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." To human sense such a victory is not easy. Neither can it be won in the twinkling of an eye. It involves a continuous mental discipline that calls for patience, courage, hope, serenity, love, prayer. There exists no other way to gain dominion over diseases and difficulties. We thank God for the measure of success and the positive results that reward our sincere, persistent, though sometimes humanly faltering efforts to control thought and accept the Christ-idea, as revealed in Christian Science.
