There is perhaps no quality more attractive than joy. We are all drawn to a smiling face, a sunny disposition, a radiant outlook on life. Even a sorrowful heart can he momentarily uplifted by the unexpected song of a bird.
Humanity pursues happiness through its many pleasure-giving inventions, but the feverish pursuit of happiness does not bring genuine, lasting joy. Sooner or later the pleasures pall, and the problems from which one has been trying to escape are still there. Even the human mind must admit that joy is something deeper and more far-reaching than the pleasures of sense. Philosophy acknowledges this, and mortals learn it through the hard school of experience. Yet there is something deep within one that craves joy. The question seems to be how to find and hold it.
Many have found a new and permanent joy through the study of Christian Science. The writer recalls that when she first became acquainted with this new-old religion she was somewhat startled at the prevalence of joy in everything connected with it. Yet it was the very thing that most attracted her to it. Trained to a somewhat cynical attitude toward life and people, she was both amazed and delighted to find that Christian Science is a religion of joy. She attended at that time a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, where the faces were bright and cheerful and the handclasps ready and sincere. The testimonies on Wednesday evenings meant much because they were spontaneous and given in the spirit of gladness. As she studied the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and as she read the Christian Science periodicals, she was impressed by their spirit of gratitude, of hopefulness, of courage. These were manifestations of a joy that could not be shaken, and they drew her to the religion as nothing else did.
