A YOUNG Christian Scientist was confronted with a perplexing situation. There did not seem to be any way out, yet his understanding of Christian Science assured him that there could be no problem without its proper solution, beneficial to all concerned.

As he endeavored to apply his understanding in dealing with the situation, he walked away from the city and sat down meditatively at the edge of a small wooded spot. All at once he heard the motor of an airplane and, as he looked up, he thought he saw the plane circling slowly above him. But as he watched, suddenly wings flapped lazily, and he perceived that what he had mistaken for a plane was only a small bird. Far beyond, appearing much smaller than the bird, went a commericial airplane.

The lesson went home. This problem seems so big to me, thought he, because I have been looking at it the wrong way, because I have not gained the right standpoint, or the right view.

A passage from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 128), occurred to his awakened thought: "A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity." He had something of that knowledge in his understanding of Christian Science. As a reflection of the infinite Mind, he knew, it was his divine right to see the harmony of God's immutable law manifested in his experience. He need not mentally keep going around in circles, trying to make what seemed an impossible adjustment of persons, places, and circumstances. The dominion given to man in the beginning (Genesis 1:26,27), eternally established in harmonious being for everyone, was certainly his own.

All at once what had seemed to him to be a stubborn situation was resolved into just a mistaken concept, as certain of solution through Christian Science as is a mathematical problem when the principle and rules of mathematics are accurately applied. So it proved to be.

To a young person choosing a college career or finding his proper usefulness in the world, it may seem that great things depend upon immediate personal decisions; that he must push and strive lest someone else take that which he desires or needs; that, as a cynic has put it, whatever the decision, "You'll be sorry if you do and sorry if you don't." No such argument of uncertainty or chance deceives the Christian Scientist. He knows that man's proper place in the divine order is spiritually defined and unchangeable, and that as one desires and seeks first of all to do God's will, that which is needful and good will come to light in his experience.

There is always opportunity for unselfed service. Self-importance and self-will may seem to make a suppositional world of mistakes, wherein no certainty can obtain; but selfishness has no part in the real universe created by God, who is Love. God's will for His beloved children must always be good. Humbly acknowledging man's absolute dependence upon his heavenly Father and actively reflecting Love enable anyone to avoid the pitfalls of misguided endeavor toward the "other gods" of false security and material place and power. Jesus renounced these falsities and devoted himself to the demonstration of the presence and power of God and of man's oneness with Him. He never lacked anything needful, nor was he burdened with material excess. His was the perfect example.

In the Christian Science textbook, above referred to, Mrs. Eddy, in defining "I, or Ego," writes in part (p. 588), "There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence; man and woman unchanged forever in their individual characters, even as numbers which never blend with each other, though they are governed by one Principle." This makes it clear that every idea of God individually expresses Him, and is as necessary in God's perfect universe as is each of the multifarious numbers in mathematics; that somewhat as all these numbers work together without interfering with each other, so individual man is harmoniously governed and directed by the one infinite Principle, God—divine intelligence. The wisdom, love, right activity, and joy which are in the nature of God, Mind, are available for all who scientifically claim them.

But how does one claim that divine heritage in the minutiae of human affairs? How keep this clear view of divine reality when material sense persistently argues otherwise? We have the answer to this question in the words of Paul to his young disciple Timothy, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Consecrated study of the Bible, together with the Christian Science textbook, so quickens the student's receptivity to good that inferiority or superiority complexes, fear, confusion, resentment, doubt, and the like are excluded from his thought. He discerns and proves that God is All.