All who give the matter thoughtful consideration will recognize that perfect intelligence signifies the absolute annihilation of fear. Ignorance begets fear. An individual who expressed perfect intelligence would know the exact course to pursue at all times, and would therefore have no doubt or questioning as to the right or wrong of any action. If this is true, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that man's harmony is in exact proportion to his scientific knowledge. On page 366 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "The Christian Scientist will be calm in the presence of both sin and disease, knowing, as he does, that Life is God and God is All." A moment's thought will show us that it is knowledge of the spiritual fact which enables one to be calm, and this calmness will be in exact proportion to his knowledge based, not upon an empiric ipse dixit, but upon demonstrable truth.

Most of us can remember instances where we have suffered intense anxiety, fear, either because of our not knowing the right course to pursue, or else because we were uncertain of the outcome of some action. This, it is easy to see, was the result of the sense of limitation, ignorance, which has always been a quality of the suppositional intelligence separate from God, the one perfect intelligence. A thoughtful consideration of these things will show us that, no matter how we have strayed into the vagaries and illusions of mortal belief, there is but one way to regain our harmony, and we should be grateful that through Christian Science we have gained a clearer knowledge of divine Truth, the intelligent application of which will deliver us from all the limitations of ignorance and superstition.

The calmness of the one who knows, compared with the anxiety of the many who merely believe, was illustrated to the writer several years ago in a court-room. The case was one in which a man had been arrested for stealing ore, "high-grading," as it is called, and it was thought by the officers of the law that the ringleader of a gang of criminals had been caught. So sure were they of this man's guilt, that the Mine Operators' Association had employed special counsel to assist the district attorney in the prosecution of the case. The accused stoutly maintained his innocence, and employed the best counsel he could afford, but very few people believed it possible for him to be acquitted, so clear seemed the evidence against him. A few days before court convened, his friends raised a large sum of money, and employed the best lawyer the place afforded, a man whose very presence in the court-room commanded the respect of all, because of his reputation for legal knowledge and the well-known fact that he would not defend a person whom he believed to be guilty.

Much to the surprise of the crowded court-room, the attorney took little interest in the empaneling of the jury, and even less in the cross-examination of the witness for the prosecution, and as the trial progressed, the friends of the prisoner felt no little chagrin at his seeming inactivity, and their hope was well-nigh gone. The one reassuring fact was the attitude of this attorney, who was the calmest person in the court-room. At last a witness was called, upon whose testimony all the case for the prosecution had been based, and, after several hours of direct examination, he started to leave the witness-stand without cross-examination, as the others had done before him, but instantly the attitude of the lawyer for the defense was changed. In a dozen questions he showed this witness to be a perjurer, and in a very few minutes the erstwhile witness was the defendant, and was eventually sentenced for the very crime he had attempted to saddle on some one else. Of course the prisoner stood acquitted.

This scene has often come up at times when material sense, the prosecuting witness in every case of sickness or poverty, has paraded its witnesses against the harmony and peace of man, and yet the practitioner who has "rendered himself strong, instead of weak, to cope with the case" (Science and Health, p. 423), knows that the witness which is arguing against the harmony of man is the same that says the sun moves, the earth is flat, and that two paralled lines extended far enough would touch. Because of his scientific knowledge that Jesus' statement, "He is a liar, and the father of it," is capable of demonstration, he is unmoved by all the witnesses who base their arguments upon sense testimony, and patiently bides his time to prove to all that every argument based upon material sense has no foundation, is not anything but a mere negation, a suppositional absence of intelligence. "The only law of sickness or death is a law of mortal belief" (The People's Idea of God, p. 12), therefore such a one is no more disturbed by the statement from the physician who bases his verdict of "incurable" upon the vacillating testimony of material sense, than was the lawyer in the case just related.

We know what God is, and that He is omnipotent and omnipresent. We know that the purpose of omnipotence is already expressed, and that no time could elapse between desire and execution where the all-power is the only activity. Thinkers are beginning to see that intelligence is coincident with divine Love, and that Love is the only Mind, and that the more of the scientific knowledge one can gain, the more real prosperity is his. At last we can consciously and with absolute certainty of success work to lay up "treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal," for spiritual knowledge is attainable, and spiritual knowledge means liberty, health, and prosperity.

If the darkening of the sun keep the fruits of the earth from growing, the earth is surely the worse, though it be blackened by no deposit of smoke. And when good things do not grow, the wild, and possibly noxious, will grow more freely. There may be no harm in the yellow tansy; there is much beauty in the red poppy; but they are not good for food.—George Macdonald.