● ● ●  years lies beyond the scope of the present volume, but the knowledge that they are there casts its own oblique light on “the years of trial.”

This characterization of the stormy middle years of test and experiment is drawn from Mrs. Eddy’s repeated references to the “trials” of the period. The word as she uses it strikes a sympathetic note to an age that values experience above dogma, experiment above security, venture above arrival. For in the lexicon of Christian Science, a trial of faith has a special significance: it is the theological equivalent of a laboratory test.

Robert Peel
Boston, Massachusetts