Why should we be grateful for trials? Every trial is essentially a belief of lack; and no one enjoys lack of any kind, be it lack of health, supply, companionship, or any other good thing. Yet the Christian Scientist knows that trials can be steppingstones to spiritual understanding.
What cause for gratitude is furnished us in the Scriptural affirmation (James 1: 17), "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." No variableness! We can trust divine Principle at all times and under all circumstances to produce harmony in all of our human experiences as surely as we can trust the principle of mathematics, when used correctly, to give us the right answer in mathematical calculations. However, whether it is a problem in elementary or in higher mathematics, the rule must be applied in order that the answer may become known to the student.
Christ Jesus did not say that we should hear, read, or believe the truth in order to be free from discord, but he said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The only way to know the truth is to demonstrate it by following in the Way-shower's footsteps. Hence our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 66), "Trials are proofs of God's care." She explains this earlier in the same paragraph where she states, "Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff,—a broken reed, which pierces the heart."
In her own experience Mrs. Eddy was not content with receiving the revelation of divine Science and being convinced of its reasonableness; she demonstrated it widely and gave it to the world. This required work. And it requires work to be an alert Christian Scientist—daily, consecrated work and prayer. But what a joyous privilege to be working with invariable and invincible Love, "with whom is no . . . shadow of turning," with "the Father of lights," who illumines our way and whose gentle presence encircles us always! We must turn away from mortal mind's suggestions of rebellion, impatience, apathy, and reliance on materiality to the truth of being before we can truly apprehend the constant, loving care of our Father-Mother God.
Mrs. Eddy tells us (ibid., p. 296): "Progress is born of experience. It is the ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for the immortal. Either here or hereafter, suffering or Science must destroy all illusions regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense and self." If we want to progress, we must be willing to exchange the counterfeit concept of man, with its sorrow and suffering, its fears and disappointments, for our real identity as God's own image and likeness, possessing the priceless God-given heritage of dominion over all that is unlike good. This must be done in the way mapped out for us in our textbooks, the Bible and Science and Health. Both of these guides teach us that chastisement for wrong thinking and wrongdoing helps us in our advance toward the kingdom of heaven, the reign of peace and harmony.
Testing times are valuable aids to spiritual progress, for they cause us to surrender all material thoughts and desires for the spiritual ideas which unfold God as Life, the substance of all real existence.
In 1891 Mrs. Eddy wrote a letter to one of her earlier pupils in which she referred to the parable of the tares and wheat. This is what our Leader said, as related by her pupil in "We Knew Mary Baker Eddy," Second Series (p. 25): "You are growing. The Father has sealed you, and the opening of these seals must not surprise you. The character of Christ is wrought out in our lives by just such processes. The tares and wheat appear to grow together until the harvest; then the tares are first gathered, that is, you have seasons of seeing your errors—and afterwards by reason of this very seeing, the tares are burned, the error is destroyed. Then you see Truth plainly and the wheat is 'gathered into barns,' it becomes permanent in the understanding." This ripening experience, this destruction, one by one, of all illusions regarding a life apart from God speeds our demonstration of perfection, which should be the goal of every loyal Christian Scientist. As this thought-transforming process takes place, we become more and more certain of the allness of God and the utter nothingness of evil. Then, as confidently as did one little child in the Christian Science Sunday School, we can affirm, "God is all there is, and that's all there is to it."
A student of Christian Science who had a very quick and beautiful healing remarked, "I am learning that gratitude completes and makes permanent a healing." Of course it does; for gratitude is the expression of one's complete trust in the adequacy of divine Love to unclasp the hold of any erroneous condition. Gratitude during testing times destroys the evidence engendered by fear. The practice of Christian Science is, indeed, a joyous work; it affords one many opportunities for gaining experience in the destruction of every claim of mortal mind to obstruct the operation of God's law and to interfere with harmony. In the words of a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal(No. 3):
A grateful heart a fortress is,
A staunch and rugged tower,
Where God's omnipotence, revealed,
Girds man with mighty power.
