"If beset with misguided emotions," Mrs. Eddy writes, "we shall be stranded on the quicksands of worldly commotion, and practically come short of the wisdom requisite for teaching and demonstrating the victory over self and sin."Retrospection and Introspection, p. 79 .
Misguided emotions would stand in the way of our growth Spiritward, our own "victory over self and sin." It is not unusual to find at the root of longstanding troubles an individual mired on some unhealed emotional quicksand, an emotional matter that he or she perhaps thought was settled by simply putting it out of thought. Ignoring or trying to forget only drives the emotional disarray beneath the surface. But when the healing Science of Christ is brought to bear, it penetrates both thought and feeling, uncovers and corrects emotional difficulties, and heals thoroughly and permanently.
The Science of Christ is the very truth of God and man. The light of this Science reveals God in His full glory— omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent— without a competitor or equal. Man is God's idea, expressing and reflecting the divine reality. There is no place in this Science for another selfhood, a mortal man, or a misguided emotion, any more than there is for another God. The only man is the man God creates and governs, forever harmonious, divinely directed, complete, perfect, whole. What we call human—with its mixed bag of physical and emotional beliefs—is to a large extent mortal misperception, a seeming distortion of the divine reality. As one opens thought to the spiritual facts of being—acknowledges Christ, Truth, as present and operative—Truth acts as a law to correct mistaken views of God and man. With sincere and diligent prayer, the human is seen as coincident with the divine, and misguided emotions are healed.
