By showing the individual his relationship to God as a divine idea, Christian Science supplies the answer to the world-wide problem of loneliness, often coupled with uselessness and old age. In the family of man we all are interrelated as sons and daughters of God.

As this truth unfolds to human thought, the narrowing, limiting concept of purely personal relationships disappears. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, says, "Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 70).

God is our Father-Mother, our one true relative. He alone is cause. The spiritual idea, or individual man, is effect. God, our parent Mind, supplies our every need through His angels, or holy thoughts. The Bible tells us, and Christian Science reiterates, that God is Love. In the Love which is God, we find warmth, comfort, and protection.

The comforting presence of God, good, does not decline or diminish with the passing years. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love" (Science and Health, p. 66). These newer views of man's continuing relationship to God as idea lead to a proper discernment of true companionship as primarily mental.

Mortals are inclined to believe that associating with others is the cure for loneliness. However, security and happiness in the home are based upon the qualities of thought expressed. The kind of thinking which our relatives and friends express, not their physical personalities, is what we love. It is the kindly act, the loving thought, the unselfish gesture, that warms our heart.

Most of the problems of material existence spring from the false premise that man, the expression of God, can be separated from his source. Who can seem to be more alone than the child chastened by a loving parent, believing that he is cut off from the sympathy of the one he holds most dear! Adolescents, lacking in their understanding of divine Love, sometimes feel adrift and apart from the family circle. The realization that each child of God is precious to the Father and has never broken away from the presence of good brings healing and comfort to these young people.

Jesus often went apart from his followers in order to be alone for prayer and communion with God. People are sometimes afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. But times of aloneness with God can be most fruitful in terms of individual spiritual growth. It is then that we come to grips with self-pity and the arguments of uselessness and realize that they have no place in God-given spiritual consciousness, the only consciousness of man.

"The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things," writes Mrs. Eddy in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 20). In divine reality there is no lack of true companionship. Companioning with God, we are never alone.

At one time a student of Christian Science was called upon to find a home for an aged relative, who was apparently incapable of caring for her home or herself. Owing to the particular circumstances, the welfare services were unable to give assistance, and there were no relatives who could offer a home. The imperative need was for companionship of the right type. Responsibility weighed heavily on the Christian Scientist, who for some months had found it necessary to assist in the running of two homes.

One day, when praying for the ideas with which to meet this need, she thought of this verse from the sixty-eighth Psalm: "God setteth the solitary in families." This healed her false sense of responsibility. From then on she saw that it was the Father's business to care for His own and that her work was to know this. Shortly afterwards a small family needing a home went to live with the aged relative. The one supplied the companionship, the other the home. Both were abundantly blessed.

In the material sense of things, wives usually depend upon husbands, children on parents, and the old on the young. As we lean more and more on the Father, we discover our divinely appointed place in Love's universe. We realize that the one great causative Mind is able to support and maintain its own with supreme intelligence.

If we accept the fatherhood of God, we must also accept the brotherhood of man. As fellow members of the household of God we can experience neither lack nor loneliness. A much-loved hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal says (No. 34):