"Friends will betray and enemies will slander, until the lesson is sufficient to exalt you." Science and Health, p. 266; One might think that these words of Mary Baker Eddy's do not offer a very cheering prospect. Yet they describe an extremely useful stage of spiritual growth, growth that promotes one's progress in expressing the one divine Mind, Spirit, or Life. They signal one's growing ascendancy over the belief of many limited minds and of life in matter.
Sometimes a person making spiritual progress (and striving to treat others unselfishly, lovingly, and tactfully) wonders why the fires of truth lighting his consciousness should occasionally spark an antagonistic response in certain people, friend and seeming foe alike.
When this happens, he may be tempted to regard it as an unhappy turn of events instead of a favorable sign on his path Spiritward. But it should soon become apparent that his growing capacity to entertain impersonal truth, which, as he cherishes it in thought, casts its pure glow on all around him, occasionally causes discomfort in some.
