Christian Science shows the sure way to get rid of trouble. But it is not the way usually chosen by men. Have you ever taken a bird's-eye view of mortals and their troubles? Have you ever noted the common procedure they follow?

Mr. A (or it might be Mrs. B or Miss C) finds himself confronted with a problem. It may be physical, financial, domestic, or something else. He (or she) feels that the thing to do is to talk it over with someone, and he proceeds to do so. Perhaps he tells several. In some cases he reviews it to everyone who will listen. If you could be in a helicopter hovering high up above the earth and had some way to hear all that was being said by the world's people, you would be likely to find that the face of the earth is pretty well covered with groups of two or more mortals telling their troubles to one another. (Many are telephoning them!)

Now there are some kinds of troubles mortals like to pour into the ears of others with a self-pitying note. Sometimes there is almost a tone of exultation when they say, "Oh, I have it too!" Being in style or keeping up with the Joneses, even in the matter of trouble, gives a morbid satisfaction to some.

But there are troubles that mortals do not talk much about to others; they are ashamed to. These are the sins, indulgences, and personal delinquencies which the individual's conscience makes him realize are not good or right, even though they may be tolerated. These troubles are kept covered. The individual may talk to himself of them, berate and condemn himself, and yet consent to remain entangled in mesmeric sin.

From the helicopter one would also see some mortals scurrying about this way and that to find someone who would give a name to their physical malady. Once a name is found, the ailment is accepted as an ugly fledgling is accepted into the flock.

After all this program is carried out by mortals—then what? Peddling some troubles, suppressing others, pinning names on others, the one high up in the helicopter observes, does not get rid of a single trouble. Putting on Adam's clothes and digging hard to find a name for some malady is not the state of thought or form of action that will ever annihilate it. Only the lying material mind, the origin of the trouble-filled material creation, impels its puppets, mortal personalities, to recite, brood over, or search for a name with which to tag error. Says Mary Baker Eddy, "Error rehearses error" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 188). Nothing else can or does.

The person who got rid of all sorts of trouble for himself and others and did so quickly was Christ Jesus. In fact, that was his life purpose—to show everyone then, and in all time, that the way to get rid of trouble is to understand God and man's spiritual sonship with Him.

People came to him by ones and twos, by families, and in multitudes. Some had heard how he freed from trouble; others had seen him heal. They did not come to rehearse their afflictions to him, but to be freed of them. Blindness, deafness, dumbness, leprosy, paralysis, deformity, insanity, animality were some that he proved substanceless. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me" (Matt. 11:28, 29). Thus he answered the question, Then what? for anyone burdened by trouble.

He bade them, "Take my yoke ... and learn of me." The mission of Christian Science is to help every mortal to take to himself the yoke, not of bondage to trouble, but of unity with infinite good, God. It is here to help all to learn of the Christ, the true idea of God, in whose inclusiveness man forever is.

Christian Science shows that what should be done when trouble appears is to turn to God, not to talk much to men, to seek the Christ which is eternally present to lift thought above all trouble and its suppositional cause by revealing to each individual his spiritual individuality, the son of God, the expression of all-harmonious Life and Love, superior to all of error's troubles. If someone has become a chronic complainer, a morbid moaner, or a what's-this-I've-got-now thinker, he does not have to remain so. He only needs mentally to come to—that is, open his thought to be enlightened by—the Christ-idea of being which blotted out men's troubles centuries ago and is doing so now, through the teachings of Christian Science.

"To decide quickly," writes Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 463), "as to the proper treatment of error—whether error is manifested in forms of sickness, sin, or death—is the first step towards destroying error." Make your decision; take the first step and never reverse it. We overcome trouble not by talking it, covering it, or by idolizing it with the doubtful dignity of a noxious name. Only by turning to our all-loving Father-Mother, to God and His Christ, and by learning through study and prayer that real life is indissoluble from eternal good do we find rest unto our souls.

Paul Stark Seeley