No one with compassion in His heart will belittle the struggles that mankind must face before all disease and distress is routed out of human experience. Sympathy and encouragement are needed wherever we turn. The strength of love and tenderness is required to be exercised on many a front before all the sick of heart find their heavenly home and the sick of body enjoy the health and peace natural to man, God's noblest work.
No problem is held to be too severe if no question arises as to one's ability to meet it. The need in every case is, therefore, the assurance of the present availability of the healing Christ. The conviction that there is a road from where we are to where we need to go, and that we can take this road, relieves thought of the oppressive fear of failure and opens wide the channels of receptivity. Christian Science gives such assurance.
"No greater hope have we than in right thinking and right acting, and faith in the blessing of fidelity, courage, patience, and grace" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 209). These words of Mary Baker Eddy's are echoed and reechoed many times in her writings. Right thinking and its effect, right acting, evidence the presence of the Christ, defined by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583) as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Christ, Truth, is always available to mankind and is made apparent through their right hopes, good thoughts, ideals, and their faith in the triumph of good over evil. God is known in that which expresses Him, and the evidence of God's presence is the Christ, or divine manifestation.
