The "straw that broke the camel's back" is no more real than a mirage in the camel's native desert. The old saying—used to describe a final difficulty which, added on top of all the others, brings collapse—expresses a mental attitude or point of view rather than a basic truth. It indicates an impression of oneself or others as essentially finite and very limited in capacity.

Actually, many ordinary people, under necessity, find they can greatly exceed their own supposed limits. Sometimes they are driven to it by fear of the consequences. Others, however, have felt spiritually sustained instead of humanly driven. Prisoners of war, people on life rafts adrift at sea, those who are carrying their own burdens while caring for others, have often told of finding remarkable inner reserves when they reached out to God. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, was interested in such examples of people who had experienced this expanded capacity. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she writes, "The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human." ^{Science and Health, p. 385.}

When we're tempted to apply the last-straw theory to ourselves, it helps to consider the nature of divine law. We can see that God, who is divine Principle, Love, doesn't arrange things the way a limited and overtaxed human being might! His law is one of omnipresent good, not some good here and therefore less there. And God's law is one of complete equivalence throughout His universe. His law is one of unlimited, omniactive good, not good that can be depleted because it has been drawn on so frequently. God's very existence means that good is not some rare and exhaustible element like beryllium or uranium but the substance of all true being, found everywhere. And divine Principle sustains and expresses this divine order with supreme intelligence and perfect equipollence.

This may help to show by contrast the assumptions that underlie last-straw thinking. This kind of attitude betrays a conception of man and the universe which is simple and mechanistic—as though pouring out good necessarily implied emptying at the same time! The assumptions are all finite and material and limited. But we know, when we stop to think, that such a view doesn't make sense. Our spiritual intuition tells us that intelligent good abounds. We know from spiritual experience that it can be continually discovered through inspired thought turned Godward. And we catch sight of the fact that our truest nature is that of being an unfailing witness to and expression of all the goodness of creation.

We therefore readily accept Christ Jesus as our model of what man, the son of God, really is, instead of taking as a standard a mortal who is limited and unable. Certainly, the man God creates in His image must be much more than a poor finite being for whom nearly everything is too much, who is ready to collapse with the addition of just one more straw. Jesus came enlarging men's capacities. He opened eyes and ears, restored movement and life. He wasn't boxed in by limitations of time and place. From him we begin to get a very different concept of man. We begin to think of man not as a unit of matter but as the expression of light, God's light or being.

Nothing was a last straw to Jesus—not the provocation of the Pharisees, the lack of reformation in the cities where he preached and healed, the hatred and misrepresentation of his character, not even stupid betrayal and vicious crucifixion. Jesus knew himself as God knew him—and so his measure of himself was infinite. He redefines for us what man really is. His example helps us see the practical possibility for ourselves of living always in the light of Christ, Truth.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives this highly unconventional description of man—a description that makes supreme sense as we think of Jesus. She says: "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." ^{Ibid., p. 258.}

So, when we think we've reached our limit of endurance or patience or ability or courage or character, actually we haven't. The reason we haven't is that the concept of finitude and limit is only a mistaken human conception of ourselves and the universe. Our capacity to go further and then still further isn't based on an ability to summon one last unsuspected ounce of human will or energy from limited reserves. The capacity is God-given; the spiritual and scientific fact is that man has "a boundless basis."

Actually, we can't expend good, we can only constantly witness to its omnipresence and omniaction. As we go forward in prayer to understand the allness of our God, we find good ahead of us, awaiting us, and around us. And this good isn't simply what we can channel through ourselves, so to speak. It is in accord with the divine law that "all things work together for good to them that love God." ^{Rom. 8:28.} Mrs. Eddy captures the spirit of this infinite good when she writes: "More than regal is the majesty of the meekness of the Christ-principle; and its might is the ever-flowing tides of truth that sweep the universe, create and govern it; and its radiant stores of knowledge are the mysteries of exhaustless being. Seek ye these till you make their treasures yours." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 149.} No matter how many straws of material circumstance may be piled upon us, one spiritual glimpse of God's reality and the infinite spiritual nature of man scatters them all, shows them for what they are—substanceless, weightless false beliefs. Then we rise up to enter into "radiant stores of knowledge" and "exhaustless being."

ALLISON W. PHINNEY, JR.