Christ Jesus gave the answer to mankind's problem of fear. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," said the Master, "and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33). He also said (Luke 17:21), "The kingdom of God is within you."

What is this kingdom within? How did Jesus know that each one has within himself the power to meet successfully the fears and doubts attendant upon a material sense of existence and find security and happiness in God?

Christian Science reveals that the kingdom of God within is harmony, the spiritual consciousness of reality, which is possessed by man, the real selfhood of each of us as the reflection of the one Mind, God. God's kingdom includes divine qualities of thought, which Paul called "the fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22). Some of these qualities are love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, and faith.

To express these qualities is to find our at-one-ment with God. It is to have access to His wisdom and guidance. Then we are equipped to meet fear because we have found true happiness and satisfaction through expression of our real selfhood.

Fear, though often undetected, would set up great pressures in human thought, pressures which drive the individual and from which he seeks release. Human fear arises, in part, from the belief that man is a mortal, separated from God and struggling to solve his problems with mere human understanding.

When, through the study of Christian Science, we earnestly seek the kingdom of God, we are drawing nearer to the source of our being and losing a sense of separation from Him. We are increasingly looking for happiness within, not at the outward conditions of life.

Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17), "Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can."

The kingdom of God already within us needs cultivation through the steadfast expression of divine qualities, which establish and settle human thought on a right basis. In the measure that we reflect God "in being and in doing good," the transitory modes of the human mind will give way to spiritual, stabilized unfoldment of the divine purpose.

Luke records an inspiring incident in Jesus' career (9:11), "The people . . . followed him: and he received them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing."

When the writer first became interested in Christian Science, the words "the kingdom of God" fell on her world-weary thought like a beautiful benediction. However, it took some months for false, material sense to yield to the realization, even in some small measure, of the absolute sovereignty that God exercises in the spiritual realm, the real creation spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis.

She then saw that, in Christian Science, every individual who so desires can re-establish his own reflected sovereignty through the realization that it has actually never been lost and through the understanding that man has never had an unhappy past. This Science enables him to separate clearly the spiritual idea of himself from the material concept, which is forever excluded from reality.

The writer resolved to wipe out of her consciousness the thoughts which had seemed to produce an unfortunate defensiveness and a sense of inferiority and insecutiry and to replace them with the spiritual qualities which constitute her real selfhood. This consistent action of seeking first the kingdom of God and of expressing God's control of her thoughts solved deepseated problems of inharmony in her home and in her husband's business. Finally her whole magnified sense of the past melted like ice in a summer sea.

It may seem difficult at times to keep our attention focused on our spiritual goal of expressing true selfhood as taught in Christian Science. But this expression provides the individual with a feeling of conscious worth and leads him into new, spiritual paths.

The glamour of popularity and position often closely simulates true values. But our Leader has counseled us (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 154), "Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness." God's directing voice comes only to the one who has no aim apart from holiness, who is seeking no other way out of fear. True ambition to be Godlike, to seek and express only spiritual thoughts, to be useful in the way of God's appointing, holds within itself orderly progress.

The human mind would betray and enslave mankind by promising to provide escape from the pressures and fears it has itself created. Alcohol, tobacco, lust, material possessions, even human relationships, are some of its answers to the hun gry, fearful heart. These answers, some more subtle than others, claim to provide satisfaction and escape; but as material adjuncts to existence, they only exchange one pressure for another.

However, to seek first the kingdom of God, to put on Godlikeness, is to experience the harmony of that kingdom. This is the true sense of satisfaction, and in it is a security that cannot be lost. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 58), "Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, — these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence."

Isaiah caught the permanent value of expressing the qualities of God when he wrote (32:17, 18): "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places." Quietness and assurance denote an absence of fear. Those who have earned this quietness and assurance by conscious worth have heeded Jesus' answer to mankind's problems of fear and doubt. They have earnestly searched beyond the evidence of the senses, and have found the security and happiness of the kingdom within, which the world cannot give or take away.