The full, satisfying life, the happiness we all seek, can be found only in God. Many, not understanding this vital fact, have turned away from God, Spirit, to matter and are vainly searching there for serenity, for joy and love, for security and usefulness. To these, Christian Science cries: "Wake up! Turn back! You are looking in the wrong direction! Reverse your course and draw near to God! Then you will find that which you seek." Some are already aware that their search in materiality has led only to bitter disappointment, suffering, and discouragement. To all these, Christian Science brings new hope. Out of her own rich experience Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of this Science, declares (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 21): "The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being."
The process of awakening is clearly described in the Bible. We read of many who had to find their way back to God. Jacob was one of these. It took him more than twenty years to realize the necessity to do so, and his way was beset with doubt and fear. But obedience to God brought him inspiration and revelation and, at Peniel a great victory over a material sense of life with its pleasures and pains.
The awakening consists of finding that matter is barren of good; that the pangs of hunger for something better in our lives cannot be satisfied in the realm of materiality. It includes the growing realization that all that is good, desirable, necessary, and beautiful belongs to God, divine Love, and is reflected by the real man. Turning back to God demands humility, repentance, and a willingness to reform. It involves a deep desire to draw near to God, to understand Him, to abide with Him. It is expressed in the abandonment of the material sense of existence with its delusive claims of good and evil and in the acceptance, without reservation, of the spiritual sense of being revealed in divine Science.
