Escaping Error's Euroclydon Experiences

Sometimes just remaining afloat on the turbulent ocean of material existence is a victory and cause for rejoicing, but eventually a vigorous effort will need to be made to get to the shore and the "Rock of Ages . . . Safe above life's raging sea." (Hymns 293-95) Some humble, receptive students of Christian Science may surf in on a wave hanging ten, if that's the correct term, with maddening ease while others may flounder and half drown for a time before being cast up like grateful Jonahs upon "Life's shore".

One way to speed up the journey to the beach is to begin thinking much more deeply and prayerfully about every word and sentence in Science and Health. Mary Baker Eddy's rich and precise vocabulary was not a prideful display of erudition. She knew the difficulty of expressing pure metaphysics and Science in human language and therefore chose her words with the inspired foresight and exactness necessary to permit the spiritual sense thereof to be revealed to the diligent and receptive student. A failure to properly discern these shades of meaning and let them lead one on in their "kindly Light" may leave him adrift on the frothy whitecaps of opaque or meaningless expressions and sentences.

Another potential maelstrom awaiting the striving Scientist is the sometimes brazen, sometimes subtle, "vanity sizing" of a number of important standards and requirements, one of which was mentioned in a recent entry, and it doesn't take a green eyeshaded accountant to ferret out others. To allow oneself to be happily deceived into a false sense of security about the requirements of obedience and way-marks of real progress is to risk being abandoned on the becalmed and dispiriting waters of that "Ancient Marriner" of whom Coleridge wrote. "Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink."

I cannot resist adding as a postscript those wonderful lines near the end of this great poem, which I have quoted before:
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.