To Higher Grades

GUY B. ARTHUR

When we come upon a problem in arithmetic, we are glad that we have learned the rule for solving it. If required to multiply fractions, we remember how to multiply the numerators and denominators separately and reduce the result to its lowest terms. Our teacher's assurance has been supported by numerous experiences of our own in which we have learned to respect the law that governs the procedure. Doubtless some of our attempts failed at first, but succeeded when the several steps were brought into strict obedience to the governing law.

If a pupil should progress that far—to a practical understanding of the multiplication of fractions—and should say, Well, now I can multiply fractions, and I will just stay in this grade, it would seem queer; it would be so unlike a boy or girl. We do not expect a boy or girl to stand still just because he or she has learned to do fractions. Rather would we think how well it equips one to advance to proportion and decimals and algebra. The pupil is glad because he sees the important outcome—the advance to higher grades and bigger problems.

In the same way a student of Christian Science was beginning to grasp Mrs. Eddy's meaning in the sentence, "Trials are proofs of God's care," on page 66 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." But one day he saw that he was not like a child in school. When a problem came he applied what he knew in a rather shiftless fashion, and called a practitioner for help when his own work did not succeed. He was glad when the problem was met and he was free again, but in the experience there was no urge to advancement. Each problem stood alone. Unlike the pupil, he did not connect it in orderly progress to a higher grade.

Then he began to think of Christian Science as a study, with grades and orderly progression in understanding,—just as there is orderly progression in every other serious study,—as a science which cannot be grasped in its fullness in the primary grade, nor in the fifth or eighth grade, nor even in high school or college. It was revealed as a study which transcends all others. The prospect became beautiful and bright with promise.

The student was able to turn his thinking about and say, Well, here is another of those trials, another opportunity to prove God's care, so that I can get on into the next grade. The process is a happy one. Instead of woefully observing that another difficulty has come to interrupt our busy enjoyment of material life, and reluctantly turning to our work to dispel it, we can recognize it as a recitation period; for both study and recitation—demonstration—periods are necessary in every school, Both are needed for advancement.

Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 318): "In Science man is governed by God, divine Principle, as numbers are controlled and proved by His laws. Intelligence does not originate in numbers, but is manifested through them." We see, then, that numbers are controlled by God's laws. They cannot, therefore, fail. They are obedient to, and cannot be separated from, the immutable laws of God, whose ruling is through love, as the rightness of the results always proves.

Perhaps it has not been so clear that man is governed by God in that same unchanging way. In an indolent state of thinking we shall not rise to that far view. The pupil in the lower grades does not yet know the vast sweep of mathematics through and beyond the university. He is therefore content to do the few problems assigned for the present moment, with no anxiety regarding the greater problems which lie ahead. But we, more adult in our consciousness of waiting problems, knowing that the ascent is to him who presses forward, should rouse ourselves to prove that man is indeed governed by God, through His laws, and that problems when solved unfold more of God's laws and lead us on to higher grades in thinking and proficiency.

And then we see more clearly the roundness and completeness of the love which Mrs. Eddy realized in saying, "Trials are proofs of God's care." Christ Jesus marked no aimless path for us. How wise the love of that consummate Teacher to draw us on through trials! How greatly did he prove his own proficiency! James wrote: "The trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

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