An acquaintance once told me that he was too sick and too worried over his troubles to give himself treatment in Christian Science. I asked him if he was too distressed to be honest. He said that of course he could be honest because that was his nature. It was his way of living. What he doubted was his capacity to concentrate on spiritual things when his thought was so disturbed. His point of view avoided the main issue, namely that the fundamental aim of prayer or metaphysical treatment is not the mere consideration of certain ideas, but the consistent demonstration of a more spiritual way of life.
There is a great difference between merely considering ideas and living them. One could consider the gods of ancient Greece, spend his whole day studying them and thinking of little or nothing else, without changing his way of thinking, his way of life. One could think about honesty without being honest. And one could think about all the Christian qualities without making them part of the way he lives.
True faith, like honesty, is a way we think and act, a way of life. Humility is an attitude toward experience. Purity is a standard we maintain regardless of the suggestions that come and go. Hunger and thirst after righteousness—essential to progress—is a deep yearning, a deep desire for the things of God, not merely a concentration upon metaphysical argument.
