WHEN I FIRST LEARNED in Christian Science that God's creation is entirely spiritual, I suspected it would take discipline—consistent study, prayer, and practice—to prove step-by-step that I wasn't walking around on matter, or didn't exist in matter. I was right. And it's definitely still a work in progress. Yet I am confident that as we persevere in our prayers on this basis, applying the laws of God to the myriad challenges of life, we'll find the healing we desire.
At times, we need to have the same perseverance in applying the principles of spiritual law as a mathematician does in working on a tough math problem. If he or she wasn't progressing quickly, would that person assume that the principles of math weren't working? Or that these principles worked before, but not now? Or that they worked for other people, but not for them? Of course not. Would they look for some sort of alternative math? No, the mathematician would labor for as long as it took until he or she had successfully applied the principles of mathematics and found the answer. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line" (p. 457).
I knew that prayer in a direct line would be necessary if I wanted big breakthroughs and significant progress in my understanding of creation as spiritual and of God as its governing, divine Principle. Mary Baker Eddy explained that the activity of this divine Principle heals when she wrote, "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation" (Science and Health, p. xi).
