"To those leaning on the sustaining infinite," writes Mary Baker Eddy in the Preface of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. vii), "to-day is big with blessings." What an assuring, heart-warming statement with which to start each day. At once we feel ourselves enfolded in God's goodness, right where we are, in our home, our business, our country's service. Wherever today finds us "leaning on the sustaining infinite," maintaining an awareness of our oneness with God, there the day "is big with blessings."

These blessings in human experience may come to us as opportunity for service, for useful activity, or as any of the right things we desire or need. At times, today's blessings may not be recognized as such, for they may be experiences necessary to clear the way for that immeasurable good which awaits only our readiness to receive it. Of this we may be sure: our life cannot remain drab, uneventful, commonplace, or burdened with drudgery, overwork, fear, worry, or sorrow if we hold inflexibly our divine right of "leaning on the sustaining infinite."

It is an inspiring experience to watch the dawning of a new day as night gives way before the effortless approach of light. In the same compelling way nonessentials, disturbances, obstructions, hindrances, and delays in our daily affairs give way before the joyous scientific acknowledgment of His presence everywhere and of our being in that presence.

Our Leader leaned on "the sustaining infinite," and was supported by it in the tremendous work of establishing the Christian Science movement. Of the task she set for herself she writes in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 73), "I endeavored to lift thought above physical personality, or selfhood in matter, to man's spiritual individuality in God,—in the true Mind, where sensible evil is lost in supersensible good."

Whenever we come to the place where we reach out through the mist of material sense for convincing proof of God's presence, we are, whether aware of it or not, seeking certitude of our own spiritual individuality, our immortal selfhood, our unerasable identity. Christian Science has established this fact clearly for all time that God and man are one, coexistent and inseparable. They are one as the wave is one with the ocean, the sunbeam one with the sun, the reflection one with the object before the mirror. One cannot be held in thought without implying the full expression of the other.

This divine presence is the "I AM THAT I AM" which talked with Moses and enabled him to lead a nation to freedom, and to which Jesus testified when he declared, "I and my Father are one."

Our perception of the perfection of this indissoluble oneness of God and man, taught by Christian Science, lifts us above the limited, finite sense of man. A clear glimpse of this coexistence has in many well-authenticated cases resulted in instantaneous healings. This truth, held to in the midst of danger and peril, will provide safety, security, and deliverance. The daily effort to maintain in consciousness the present fact of this oneness has brought about transformation in the character, environment, and circumstances of countless individuals. For in this union there is the perpetual, irresistible attraction of Soul, ceaselessly lifting the aspirations, hopes, and endeavors of mankind into the sphere of reality, where there is nothing short of true individuality in all its wholeness, completeness, and perfection.

A Sunday school class of high school students seriously questioned among themselves one Sunday whether they genuinely wanted to exchange the human personality and present sense of the physical world with its ups and downs, its attractions and struggles, for spiritual perfection. For, they argued, in such a state of existence the stimulating element of competition, the thrill of conquests, variety, and change, would have no place.

The teacher knew that only a misapprehension of the nature of Spirit, Mind, and its representative, man, could give rise to such surmise. She earnestly urged the class to make a deeper study of all of Mrs. Eddy's works, giving especial attention to the definitions of God and man. She knew that as the glow of spiritual understanding dawned in each one's consciousness, the circumscribed, wholly inadequate material sense of self would be discarded as naturally and as inevitably as the confining earth falls away from the plant pressing up past every obstacle to reach the freedom of light, sunshine, and fruition.

We cannot doubt that in infinite Mind there is uninterrupted and unfettered opportunity for joyous adventure, discovery, and achievement. Identity will never be submerged in this one Mind. Rather is it clearly defined and distinguished. Thus self-expression in its true sense is realized. The spirit of competition is translated by Science into the mutual joy of sharing the divine ideas of Mind revealed to and through each one of us as we fulfill the purpose of our being, to "multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion." Continuous revelation awaits man in Science.

As we grow to adore the infinite One, God, in whom we have our true being, we learn something of what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves, for we behold in him the "one altogether lovely." Perfection of being is not a fact for any one of us unless it is the fact for all, from the least to the greatest. This being is not remote and abstract; it is ever here. All we know of ourselves, our loved ones, and our world that is good, beautiful, worthy, and pure is at this moment embosomed and preserved in "the sustaining infinite," and each unfolding hour belongs to God.