Mary was one of the oldest girls in her school and was in the top form. Everyone in the rest of her form was a school prefect, so it was natural to suppose, when there was need to vote for a new prefect, that Mary would be chosen. However, for quite a while Mary had been wrestling with what appeared to be an erratic temperament. Sometimes she was steady and at peace, but at other tunes she was restless and entirely irresponsible. So when the voting took place, Mary was not elected. Instead, a much younger girl from a lower form was promoted over her. This was an overwhelming blow to Mary. She felt bitter and acutely self-conscious, especially when she thought of being the only girl in her form who would not be exempted as a prefect from waiting upon others at table.

For a long time Mary had cherished another desire, one which meant even more to her than being elected a prefect at school. She was a Christian Scientist and had attended Sunday School since she was two and a half years old. Her most earnest wish was that she might become a public practitioner of Christian Science. She knew that every practitioner's first patient is himself, and that if she were going to help others later on she must heal the erroneous condition in her own thought now. She saw, too, that she had a lesson to learn which she would profit by long after the immediate problem was healed, and she resolved to learn the lesson happily under the tender and omnipotent guidance of Love.

With childlike expectancy she turned to her copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy and opened it at page 31. These lines at the top of the page stood out to her: "Pride and fear are unfit to bear the standard of Truth, and God will never place it in such hands." With a sense of awe she read the words over and over again. Never before had she realized the nearness of God so clearly or seen the truly individual way in which He meets the human need.

She knew that above all else she longed to bear the standard of Truth, and she knew, too, that her present distress was caused by both pride and fear—pride in position and privilege and fear of what others would think of her failure to attain them. She reasoned that since "pride and fear are unfit to bear the standard of Truth," God places it in the hands of those expressing the opposite qualities, loving meekness and trustfulness. Gradually she became genuinely glad that she had not been made a prefect at that time, because she saw that she had not been manifesting the Christlike qualities necessary to perform the duties of the position, and also that she might have missed learning a most important lesson. This needful lesson she now set out to master with quietness and confidence.

Primarily, she learned that it is the function of God's child to be His reflection. There is no self-condemnation or self-adulation in this function; there is no self-consciousness in it at all. There is meekness in it, because man has no underived power. There is trustfulness in it, because God is unchanging good. There is love in it, because God is Love, and man partakes of the nature of God by reflection.

Two verses from the Bible were also of great help to her (II Cor. 9:7, 8): "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." This thought enabled her to congratulate the new prefect ungrudgingly and also to serve in the dining room cheerfully and without embarrassment. Any shallow of false ambition faded from her consciousness in the light of the unselfish ambition to learn the lessons of meekness, trustfulness, and love. The happiness of that term she never forgot.

Later it became necessary to vote again for a prefect, and Mary was elected. She was glad in her heart to find that her new appointment gave her no special personal elation, although she was grateful for the wider opportunity her new responsibilities gave her to bear the precious standard of Truth.

A few years after Mary left school she was able, as she had so long desired, to take up the public practice of Christian Science. Many times the lesson so pungently learned at school has come back to her with renewed blessing. None need be discouraged by his problems or overwhelmed by unpleasant traits of character which he may sometimes discover within himself, Each may look forward expectantly to mastering his problems and overcoming false temperament. Through some understanding of perfect God and perfect man we learn needed lessons under God's gracious tuition.

On page 15 of "Miscellaneous Writings," in her article "The New Birth," Mrs. Eddy encourages us to learn these lessons. "The new birth is not the work of a moment," she writes. "It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of sell-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love."

Let no one who desires to bear the standard of Truth in any walk of life suppose that an erroneous condition is either too insignificant or too difficult to tackle. The new birth can be, must be, begun now. In the article quoted above our Leader exclaims, "What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the 'old man,' until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears."