While a student of Christian Science soon learns to expect rapid physical healing through Science, he is sometimes less awake to the need of right expectation in regard to speedy healings of faults of character.
The definition of "Gad (Jacob's son)" in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy is as follows (p. 586): "Science; spiritual being understood; haste towards harmony." Nowhere is it indicated that the harmony towards which humanity must hasten through an understanding of spiritual being is harmony of body only. Harmony of mind and character is surely included.
Hundreds of students of Christian Science have received comfort and reassurance from Mrs. Eddy's counsel (ibid., p. 485), "Emerge gently from matter into Spirit." But how often we have allowed the gentle emergence to become a dawdle. The word "emerge" is important. The action it implies is of vital importance to each one of us.
