Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 135): "There is to-day danger of repeating the offense of the Jews by limiting the Holy One of Israel and asking: 'Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?' What cannot God do?" To those facing what seem to be insurmountable obstacles in the way of right accomplishment, the lesson here is invaluable. The realization of the omnipotence of God reveals the limitless capabilities of His image, man, capabilities needing but to be claimed and demonstrated. It is only as one accepts the mistaken concept of God as limited, which would imply a limited man, that limitations appear in human experience.

When reading some months ago about the setting of a record of three minutes and fifty-eight seconds for the running of the mile, one student was reminded that in 1864 the best time for this distance was four minutes and fifty-six seconds, nearly five minutes. This time was reduced to four minutes and one and four tenths seconds in 1945. Until recently any better record was considered unlikely, if not impossible. Others refused to accept this limit and continued to strive for something better.

This striving, necessarily based on an admission of the possibility of attainment, brought the new record for running a mile. No physical change or outward difference can account for this. There are, of course, other instances of record breaking in the field of sports: the raising of the pole-vault mark from ten feet in 1866 to its present level of fifteen feet seven and three quarter inches; the stretching of the shot-put mark by almost 100 per cent from thirty feet eleven inches in 1876 to sixty feet today, to name only a few.

Turning to another field, we learn that at one time railroaders believed that a steam locomotive could travel only about two hundred and fifty miles before needing major servicing. Today the diesel engine can travel between two hundred and fifty thousand and three hundred thousand miles before requiring an overhaul. An engineer in this field remarked that these engines can be made to run as far as the designer thinks they can. Does not this suggest the infinite possibilities in other areas of right human endeavor?

What is it that seems to limit the runner, the pole vaulter, the engineer, the scholar, the artist, the businessman? What is it that seems to limit strength, health, happiness success; that appears to confine us to something less than that which is wholly right and good? All that limits us is our ignorance of the fact that God, divine Mind, is limitless and that therefore His perfect reflection or idea, man, expresses the limitless abilities and capabilities of Mind.

We read in the fourth chapter of Exodus that Moses, when ordered by the Lord to deliver the children of Israel, at first accepted a sense of limitation. Then the narrative continues, "The Lord said unto him, ...Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." The Gospels tell us that when Jesus, having only a few loaves and fishes, saw the hungry multitudes, the material evidence of limitation did not convince him that any degree of good was lacking. The appearance of human good in the form in which it was needed—in an ample supply of food—resulted from the Master's conscious demonstration of God's allness.

Mortal sense would have us believe that man's joy, his ability, intelligence, opportunities, well-being, are limited by birth, personality, or by economic or physical so-called law. This is not the truth of man's being, and to assume so would be to admit that there exist powers opposed to Almighty God, that God is not All and that He is limited in nature, being, and expression. In reality there is no law or influence but that which comes from God, as the Bible makes clear. Man's existence is not limited at all, for man's Life is God. Man's health, or wholeness, is not limited by anything, for man exists forever as the perfect image of his Maker.

Is one tempted to complain that he has not the intelligence, the time, or the money to obtain a needed education; or that he is too young, too old, or too weak to have gainful employment; or that he lacks love, a home, or friends? These are admissions of a shortage of good, whereas actually God, who is good, is everywhere. In divine Science we learn that all the good required for anyone at any time is already present. This can be proved in human experience. If good is not in evidence outwardly, it is because it is not entertained clearly enough in individual thought as the reality of being.

Mrs. Eddy declares (Science and Health, p. 227): "Citizens of the world, accept the 'glorious liberty of the children of God,' and be free! This is your divine right. The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being."

It is well to note that it is only the illusion of limited mortal sense which would stand between one and the attainment of whatever is right and needful, whether it is a new track record, the writing of a thesis, the gaining of a friendship, the finding of a job, or the healing of a disease. The illusion of limitation is utterly destroyed in the irresistible light of infinite Truth, which reveals all right ideas forever unlimited by material sense.

Man, being a compound idea of God, embodies all right qualities. What seems to be lack or inharmony is but a belief in the absence of God. And this is seen to be ignorance of the fact that God, the only cause and creator, is without limit. The student of Christian Science learns not to ask whether God can set a table in the wilderness. He knows that because God is omnipresent, good is omnipresent, and that each one finds good to be available to him in the proportion that it is claimed and demonstrated.

Mrs. Eddy gives us this further counsel (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 281, 282): "You will need, in future, practice more than theory. You are going out to demonstrate a living faith, a true sense of the infinite good, a sense that does not limit God, but brings to human view an enlarged sense of Deity."