Article February 12, 1910 Issue

PROBLEMS

DR. EDMUND F. BURTON.

The word problem usually has a hard sound to our ears, and suggests difficulties and perhaps possibility of failure. In truth a problem is neither a Gordian knot nor a snarl to hinder and puzzle the seeker after truth and success. It consists of a plain question, connected by a certain straight path to a definite answer, the whole forming an illustration of and testimony to the truth of a basic law. Moreover, apparent involvement in the statement of the question can never affect in any way the truth that a complete and harmonious answer exists. In fact a question is often but a statement of a truth in interrogative form. The seeming complication therein may be but a manifestation of ignorance in the one looking at it; not something present in the problem, but in the mind perceiving it.

We learn in our school days that the problems in our books are not unanswerable riddles, impossible of solution, put there to exasperate and annoy us; and it is only the suspicious, distrustful pupil who finds in them the "catch questions" believed to be designed to bring to him failure and chagrin instead of enlightenment, development, and increased power. The open-minded, intelligent student knows that they are set down not because there is no answer, but because there is one; and that he who has set down the question has already seen the answer. Such a student sees in these so-called "examples" illustrations of a fundamental law, and follows step after step with alert and expectant mind, until his reason is delighted by the rounding out of the logical conclusion reached. Thus hunger and thirst after truth, together with faith in the honesty and intelligence of the teacher, have led him from the question, by the unfailing route of scientific prayer, to the answer which is eternally harmonious and coexistent therewith.

Jesus taught that when the eye is single the whole body is full of light, and his Science proves to us that when one refuses to see anything but the truth, the problem of being is seen as a harmonious whole, and it is faced with calm and open-eyed fearlessness, based upon the knowledge that wherever there is a question there is an answer in Mind. Such was Paul's mental attitude when he rejoiced in trials, knowing that every test makes more firm and abiding the conviction of the truth of omnipresent harmony and establishes the student more firmly on the rock of the allness of the one Mind whose power and activity is good. Mrs. Eddy's teaching that "every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger" (Science and Health, p. 410), is in harmony with this attitude.

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