Thousands of people who formerly were lost in a maze of conflicting doctrines and confusing religious theories can attest that they found their way out when they took up the study of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Old questions remaining in thought concerning religion, God, and the universe began immediately to be answered. Puzzling phrases in the Bible were cleared up for them. They were grateful beyond measure. They were healed, some of chronic diseases and lifelong ailments. It can be understood that their joy was great, and for the moment they felt that nothing could ever replace their serene, uplifted thought or could ever again mar or destroy the harmony of their human existence.
But, alas, since evil's supposed aim is to possess mankind as long as is possible, there were struggles ahead and trying testing times. And thus it is that sometimes one hears a new student of Christian Science cry out, "I seem to have more problems since I began the study of Christian Science than I ever had before!"
These testing times mark the progress of the individual. Our Leader shows the necessity of them in her statement (Science and Health, p. 22), "Love is not hasty to deliver us from temptation, for Love means that we shall be tried and purified." And under the marginal heading "Cleansing upheaval" she states (ibid., p. 540): "The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin."
