In answering the question (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 495), "How can I progress most rapidly in the understanding of Christian Science?" Mary Baker Eddy admonishes, "Study thoroughly the letter and imbibe the spirit." She also says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 114), "Our Publishing Society, and our Sunday Lessons, are of inestimable value to all seekers after Truth."
One of the early steps of the beginner, and a very important one, in the search for Truth, as revealed in Christian Science, is the daily study of the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly. It is a very helpful step towards the goal of understanding. Should these Lessons at first seem in some cases difficult to understand, there need be no discouragement, for the seeker will agree that he is approaching Truth from a standpoint probably different from any known before. So, rather than acting as a deterrent, the problems may be regarded as incentives for probing deeper into the metaphysical opposite of material thinking. No rules of study were specifically outlined by our Leader, for she well knew that the earnest seeker would progress easily and naturally from the "reader" stage to the "student" stage.
The incentive for a deeper search is plain. From daily study thought is spiritualized. The beginner soon finds himself able to prove the availability of Christian Science to meet the incidents of daily life in individual, communal, and national affairs and the working out of human problems through a clearer understanding of divine laws. When once the effects of obedience to spiritual law are even partially understood, the upward pathway becomes spontaneous, moving forward as naturally and joyously as the progress of a school child who has proved the mathematical laws of working out his sums and knows that they will "come right." The way is lightened. The laws of Life, Truth, and Love are unfolded and recognized as unerring and, once accepted, are quickly manifested in better conditions of health and general affairs.
