Mortal existence is a variable experience. Some days seem pretty good; some not so good; and often some are much upset and gloomy. Sometimes we hear a friend say that he feels under pressure. Probably most of us have encountered some hectic days when things have seemed to be at sixes and sevens, and we have felt as though something has set our world all topsy-turvy.

Well, let's look into this matter of pressure on or against us. My Oxford dictionary starts out its definition of "pressure" by calling it the "exertion of continuous force upon a body by another in contact with it." Bricks lying in a wall, sardines in a can, or persons pushing persons in a crowd, would be examples of physical pressure. Then the dictionary refers to the gaseous pressure of atmosphere and steam, and lastly to the more mental forms, such as financial pressure, oppression, and the pressure of trouble.

There are those who believe the stars have more control over their affairs than God, and who say that what they call "pressure periods" are due to the particular alignment at particular times, of certain planets—big balls of matter, in space. Such thinking presumes that the supremely intelligent cause of man, whom we call God, has surrendered or delegated His sovereignty to certain selected material spheres, man-made calendars, and material forces. But how can supreme intelligence work through unthinking matter and ignorant forces? "The planets," says Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 102), "have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe." Large and distant balls of matter are no more the controller of man than smaller and nearby balls of matter—baseballs, for instance.

Christian Science leads us to see and understand that there is never any pressure on, in, or against man. Why not? Because pressure is a physical, or materially mental, force, an effect of the negative mortal mind—the one evil. This mortal mind and all its forces are suppositional and fictitious. They do not make man, and they never touch or influence him. Their claim that they can bring pressure to bear on him through a material brain and nerve system is a false and futile assumption. Man is in God, as idea is in Mind. He is not created by, or of, matter, does not exist in a material bulk called a physical body; nor do the nerves or any physical part provide a way of access for negative forces to reach his consciousness or upset, for an instant, the harmony of his being.

Always, let us remember, it is because man is spiritual, not material, that he has continuous dominion over and superiority to materially mental and physical forces. The Apostle James saw a very important spiritual fact when he said of God that He is "the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness."

Then man, God's constant expression, can have no variableness. For him there can be no days or hours of confusion or pressure, no "pressure periods." These are myths of material sense, one and all, which, because they are ignorant and mindless, are substanceless and truthless. They cannot impose themselves on the being or feeling of God's son and image. Man can be sensible only of the forces of God. If adverse pressure could operate on man, evil would have dispossessed God of His absolute, constant control of His son. The immutability of God's work would be disproved, and chaos would be the ultimate of creation.

Mrs. Eddy uses words with keen discrimination, and only once does she use the word "pressure" throughout her writings. On page 451 of Science and Health she says, "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate." The only pressure we can rightfully feel and accept is, then, the pressure, or demand, of Truth that we mentally come out from the belief in a world of materiality and mortal selfhood, and separate our sense of existence and identity from the lie that matter makes and embodies man, then subjects him to oppressive frictional forces that would disturb, depress, and discourage him. Let us be grateful that this is the one and only pressure we "must live under."

Mrs. Eddy follows this first sentence with another in which she tells Christian Scientists something further they "must" do. She says, "They must renounce aggression, oppression and the pride of power." If we, through self-will, put pressure on others, it reacts on us. Finally and with another "must," she thus points the one way by which her followers may prove their superiority to any sense of material pressure: "Christianity, with the crown of Love upon her brow, must be their queen of life." The spiritual idea of Love's universal, constant omnipotence leaves no time, place, or power for material pressure. What chance have ignorant, disruptive, frictional material forces against the universal, omnipresent, and omniactive forces of Love which are ever active in man?

So let us daily realize that we are superior, by reason of man's spirituality, to any and every claim of earthly pressure, whether it be called the pressure of routine, home duties, office duties, duties in the armed forces, financial pressure, time pressure, or pressure from aggressive human wills. We forever live and have our being in God. Only His forces, the spiritual and moral forces of Love and good, are working in us today, tomorrow, and forever, producing that constant spontaneity of thought, word, and act in our daily lives which is natural to man, and which evidences the omnipresent, omniactive Person we call God.

Paul Stark Seeley