POPE'S maxim, "Order is Heaven's first law," has become so familiar as to be almost a platitude, but it is surprising to see how little its absolute truth is realized in the affairs of individuals or of nations, and it would be interesting to know if Pope himself recognized how strictly his statement is in keeping with Biblical teaching. Can there be anything more calculated to bring a sense of perfect order to the human mind than the wonder of a starlit night? As the eye travels over the panorama of stars and planets spread out in what seems to be an infinite array, and we realize that beyond are millions upon millions of other worlds, other suns, other planets, whose distances are measured in such numbers that finite sense reels in the attempt to grasp them, we can but be overwhelmed by the calm, the quiet, the majesty, the unbroken order of that vast multitude "moving in the harmony of Science" (Science and Health, p. 514).
The old, old question, asked in every age and still unanswered by any human hypotheses, must again recur: What is man's place in this great scheme, or has he no place there? Is he part of it, or merely "an atom of dust thrown into the face of spiritual immensity"? (Science and Health, p. 263). That many who tortured themselves with such speculations have found at last the solution to the problem is due to the author of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," to whom, if even for that one blessing alone, humanity owes an immeasurable debt of gratitude.
As, through practical understanding and demonstration of Christian Science, the human concept of the universe is lifted even slightly from the material toward the spiritual, the thought of Principle, hitherto supposed by the majority of people to be a vague idea which concerned students of science, but with which the "man in the street" had nothing whatever to do, takes a more prominent place, and the general belief that man is a creature of chance gradually gives place to the conviction that man and the universe are alike governed by divine Principle. Further, if the Scriptural description of man be true, he is not only the highest and most complete manifestation of Principle, or the Father, sustained in the one unchangeable law and order which governs all the ideas of infinite Mind, but, as we learn in Science and Health, he includes "all right ideas" (p. 475). If this is the ultimate to which our sense of man and his place in Mind has to attain, it is obvious that we have a long journey before us, and that we shall do well to see that we are at least making a start in the right direction.
