Today we stand at the door of a new world, a world of shrinking distances but of expanding horizons. Before us is spread a vast array of new ideas, new techniques, new opportunities. In the realm of thinkers the word impossible is seldom heard. Barriers of all sorts are being scaled or shattered, falling before the onward march of released thought.

In the midst of these new concepts and changing scenes, in the breaking up of earthbound limits, one may well ask what his concept of self is. Is he confined within the walls of corporeality, bounded by personal sense, or has he accepted the fact that man springs from Mind and is the self-expression of the unlimited God?

Perhaps the most challenging wall which confronts mankind is what might be called the self-barrier, the concept of a self separated from and foreign to the divine Ego, or I am, called God. This mortal egotistical concept of self claims to be the most solid and plaguing wall in one's experience. Christian Science alone can penetrate its apparent density and usher one into the realm of boundless possibilities.

How is this done? Not by destroying a tangible reality called a personal self and substituting for it another and more ethereal identity called a spiritual self. Science acknowledges and demonstrates God as the one eternal Ego, or Mind, of whom man is the unrestricted and conscious expression. This spiritual expression constitutes man's selfhood in the Science of Soul.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship." ^{Science and Health, p. 316;} Do not these illuminating words parallel those of our Master, Christ Jesus, when he said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me"? ^{Matt. 16:24;}

"Deny himself." "Lose sight of mortal selfhood." What joyous directives! The most inspiring experience one can have is the awakening to his sonship with God. Through the Science of Christianity we learn that there is no outside to the infinity of God's love and that within this infinity each detail of man's being, his full identity, is unfolded and preserved. We learn that God is constantly reflecting Himself in terms of abundance and beauty, of form and intelligence, and that man as God's reflection has the wisdom, the divine necessity, to recognize himself as the embodiment of these ideas and qualities.

Hence one should stop talking age, stop living in the past, stop comparing today with yesterday. Scientific identification enables one to drop the personal sense of I with its false traits and peculiarities and to know himself as the Father creates him. In the Father's sight each one is wearing the robes of righteousness and immortality, and on these robes there are no patches of disease and lack, of case history and mortality. There is nothing to mar the beauty of sonship. Because God is All, there is but one creator and one creation. Therefore even though the material senses portray creation to us as frail mortals and perishable objects, Science opens our eyes to see the real universe and man and to behold perfect sonship.

Paul wrote the Ephesians that they were God's workmanship and said of the Christ, "He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us." ^{Eph. 2:14;} To know ourselves as God's workmanship, God's manifestation, is to see that man is not composed of two identities—a spiritual and a material. The false mortal personality is not a second I or ego, made of solid stuff which must in some way be disposed of. It is a misconception, a counterfeit sense, an out-of-focus view of the real man. The real man is made in the likeness of God, as stated in the first chapter of Genesis, and is right now alive, complete, and vitally present.

Christian Science does not take power away from evil; it reveals the spiritual fact that evil has no power. Omnipotence belongs to God. Scientific, uplifted thinking points the answer to whatever problem may confront one. Recently it was necessary for a Christian Scientist to obtain certain information in order to make an important decision. This information involved a large banking organization. But she found it was not possible to contact the head of the department from whom the information could be obtained.

The Christian Scientist appeared to be faced with walls on every side. She decided at once not to accept the concept of herself as a small, incomplete mortal needing something located on the outside of herself. She saw instead that being is subjective; that since all-inclusive Mind is uninterruptedly unfolding itself, she— Mind's likeness already included the right answer for each legitimate question.

A few days later the telephone rang. It was a call from a friend she had not talked to for several years. This friend, she discovered, was employed in an official way with the firm from which the Scientist needed information. In this conversation her friend gave all the necessary data which enabled the Scientist to make the right decision, and harmonious action followed. Instead of a stone wall the Scientist found no wall at all, but an open door to the right answer.

Mrs. Eddy asks, "What is it that seems a stone between us and the resurrection morning?" And she answers, "It is the belief of mind in matter." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 179.} Are we building this barrier or making a breakthrough? How many self-stones are we putting into this wall, this illusive creation? How much self-will, self-importance, self-pity are we indulging in and holding to as part of our being? Any catering to the self-family produces unhappy relationships and tends to build the barrier rather than to break it down.

One scientific truth persistently lived, the outpouring of gratitude for the limitless good that is ours, and the inclusion of our brother in this universe of love—all this makes reality come alive for us and serves to dissipate the so-called substance of the sham barrier of self. So may we realize the flimsy nature of any suggestion which would separate us from God, the only Ego.