Article July 18, 1942 Issue

"God in His wisdom will test all mankind"

[Written Especially for Young People]

JANET M. BRANIN

"Rest assured that God in His wisdom will test all mankind on all questions; and then, if found faithful, He will deliver us from temptation and show us the powerlessness of evil,—even its utter nothingness." So writes MaryBaker Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 114). This inspiring assertion was of great comfort to one young student of Christian Science who was facing final examinations in her third semester of graduate study at a university. She was apprehensive, because it was necessary for her to obtain grades superior to those she had been able to achieve in her advanced work in order to be a candidate for a higher degree. However, when her thought was lovingly uplifted to the truth of this statement by our Leader, all sense of having to meet human demands with human equipment vanished. She perceived that she possessed the ability to utilize, in unlimited measure, unobscured divine intelligence to bring to fruition her work during the semester, both spiritual and academic. As a result of her improved thinking she received excellent grades in her examinations and courses and was able to meet the needed requirements.

When it is seen that thought is entirely the activity and provision of Mind, an examination may become essentially the opportunity for the student to prove his divinely reflected powers. Thus the examination room, so often a place of confusion, frustration, or anxious fear, can become for the youthful Christian Scientist a sanctuary where he may draw upon the infinitude of omnipresent Mind for confidence, ability, and time. If he is momentarily tempted to believe that he cannot answer any question, intelligence will supply him with all that he needs to know in the oneness of true consciousness. Did not Christ Jesus promise that the Comforter will "bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you"? If one is assailed by the prevalent argument that he may not be able to answer a question completely or competently enough, or that there may not be time enough for a thoroughly prepared statement, he can know with assurance that there can be no lack, incompetence, or half success in the realm of Spirit. God will supply both the time and the ability for him to complete his task with calmness and satisfaction.

There can be no possibility of confusion, doubt, or failure when we realize that we have the ability to reflect at all times perfect Mind in its infinite unfoldment of spiritual ideas. The powers of perception, assimilation, synthesis, and memory are gifts from the Father and instantly available. True, mortal mind would tell us that the learning process is a laborious one in which we pore over the wisdom of the great minds of the past and present, hoping that we may retain in our own circumscribed intellects the fruits of their learning, until the occasion arises for us to pour forth our accumulation of knowledge for other minds to grade us. It would be presumptuous, it suggests, for us to think we can know or remember everything. But Paul reminds us: "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." True education consists in our learning to identify ourselves with that which we already divinely are and have as Love's own perfect, whole, and perpetually intelligent expression.

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