So it will be with you. With doubt and uncertainty the pressure may be
high in the gauge, but the engine does not move. Make up your mind,
and you release energies previously wasted in conflicts between
opposing thought complexes struggling for supremacy.

[Sidenote: _Why "Christian Science" Works_]

A fine illustration of this is shown in the religious experience known
as conversion. To the convert, conversion means the profound
acceptance of a mighty spiritual truth. It means positive knowledge
taking the place of doubt or indifference. Conflicting ideas are no
longer present in his consciousness. Pent-up energies are released. He
wants to do things. His soul is fired with overmastering impulses to
action. He wants to go forth and preach the gospel of his faith. He is
lifted to a high plane of exhilaration. He experiences the "peace that
passeth understanding."

"Christian Science," "Truth," "The New Thought," and similar movements
all achieve their really marvelous results in much the same way. All
proclaim doctrines of exuberant optimism, having a tendency to banish
fear-thoughts and self-consciousness and self-depreciation, and to set
up in their stead ideas of courage and of achievement and of
individual power. If these teachings are successful--that is to say,
if they inherently possess the right appeal for the particular
individual--they have the happy effect of begetting a stoical
indifference to petty physical disorders and social vexations and
bringing about a concentration upon the main business of life of the
mental energies thus previously wasted.