MODERN living often seems to exert pressures which threaten dire consequences. To an individual struggling against such pressures, a breaking point may seem imminent. The remedy lies in one's distinguishing between mortal evidence and divine reality, and it calls for the establishment in one's understanding of the spiritual relationship of man with the indivisible goodness of divine Being. Thus the way is prepared for the healing and restorative mission of the Christ, Truth.
Only once in her writings does Mrs. Eddy use the word "pressure." She says (Science and Health, p. 451), "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate." Whether it takes the form of a world or a person, everything that appears to be material requires of the student of Christian Science a dedicated effort to separate in his thought the temporal and temporary from the spiritual and eternal. Goals and motives need to be separated from material standards and ambitions, so that one's work is not for self-glorification but to the glory of God.
The mortal sense of things can offer no reliable testimony of God or His creation. Spiritual discernment, based on an understanding of the nature of our Father-Mother, Love, looses the bonds of mortal beliefs, which would claim to cause stresses and strains and would often attempt to frustrate one's most conscientious endeavors.
