The truths of divine Science are exact and unchangeable, and this fact kept in view is a very present help in time of trouble. Furthermore, the statements of Truth are natural and, to the spiritually inclined, easily comprehended. To their sense it is error that is complicated, obscure, and baffling. It is the sense of error which causes our struggles in all mental work. But we must watch the deceiver that it does not make us believe that we are struggling with something real and that the truth which Jesus declared would set us free is eluding us.

To illustrate: to comprehend that infinite Mind governs all and governs harmoniously is no task; in fact it is as self-evident as that one and one are two, and we never find ourselves repeating this over and over and thinking of it very hard in order to realize it. We understand that it is so and we know that the fact can never change and that any benefit we can derive, or any benefit we expect to derive, from the fact that one and one are two is as surely ours as though we had already experienced it. For instance, if we owe A two dollars and B and C each owes us one dollar, we positively know that we have owing to us just enough money from these sources to pay A. We do not iterate and reiterate this fact, but rest assured in the truth of our understanding of the facts, the unchangeableness of mathematics. We never have spasms of fear that we shall not realize the truth of the matter and tell A that we have not sufficient "in sight" to pay him and so get into trouble with him. No, no; this never happens. We know the truth of mathematics can never be reversed, that it can never relapse.

In working out the problems of life, however, where error becomes malicious because we strike at its very so-called existence, we find ourselves thinking and rethinking, very determinedly, that infinite Mind does govern all; that the law of God does govern His child absolutely, and so on. Why do we do this? Is it because we have any doubt of the infinitude, omnipotence, and omnipresence of good and its laws? No; but it is always because we are wrestling with the seeming realism of the opposite error. We are striving to obliterate the erroneous sense with the realization of the truth declared. But what is realization? It is knowing; and the trouble sometimes is that we are striving to make carnal sense realize or know, while the fact remains that spiritual perception alone knows and realizes spiritual truth.

At such a time it stills the tempest to recognize that it is this carnal sense waging its "enmity against God" which fills us with dismay, and that our spiritual perception knows forever, and never loses sight of the fact, that all we are declaring is true now, and moreover will be manifest to mortal sense in normal and harmonious conditions if the trusting human longing for good will cling fast to spiritual perception and let the baser stratum of mortal mind, the "first degree" (Science and Health, p. 115), gnash upon itself and die of its own fury. Drawing the line of demarcation between the sense of error and the sense of Truth, we can work out our problems even in the midst of the "fear and trembling." Erroneous work upon a blackboard does not prevent us from working the same problem correctly beside of, and in sight of, the errors. The correct sense never mingles with the incorrect, so there is no possibility of any interference.

We do understand the truth we are declaring, and we also know that it is this truth declared in the supposed presence of error which destroys error's seeming presence and power. Said Jesus, "The truth shall make you free." This is all that is needed,—the understanding and declaration of Truth. It is actually understood in the degree that we love and live it; and inasmuch as we have this understanding we are able to destroy error and bring harmony into human experience. Thus he who may feel himself to be least in understanding has the joy of knowing that he may work continuously and in a straight line until he overcomes all that is evil.

To bear these things in mind will bring assurance, reliance upon mental work, and it will result in our holding to the right sense continuously. This may be said to be the ceaseless prayer whose unlabored action will finally destroy "all material sensuousness and sin," and "reach the heaven-born aspiration and spiritual consciousness, which is indicated in the Lord's Prayer and which instantaneously heals the sick" (Science and Health, p. 16). Therefore, even while the argumentative auxiliary is necessary to remind mortal sense, let us seek to rest in (though not to struggle with) those declarations of Truth which will surely bring us all things and conditions desirable, although these may be delayed because of our false sense of error.

The second and third degrees of mortal mind (Science and Health, pp. 115, 116) need this restful condition in which to yield to divine Mind and let man's spiritual nature appear; for, as Mrs. Eddy has said, "we must learn how mankind govern the body,—whether through faith in hygiene, in drugs, or in will-power. We should learn whether they govern the body through a belief in the necessity of sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind, and the healer of sin, disease, death" (Science and Health, p. 251).