THE human problem has never been more strikingly stated than in the words, "Given self, to find God." Nevertheless, for those who accept our Lord's teaching respecting the source of all being, the supreme requirement would be better phrased as, Given God, to interpret experience. The inadequacy of the sense of God's nearness, even upon the part of Christian teachers, is so manifest today as to render exceedingly pertinent the consideration of that faraway but positive promise, "My presence shall go with thee." It is quite clear that all possibilities of self discovery and development, together with all real triumphs and satisfactions, are embraced in our realization of the fulfilment of these words, and it is also clear that Christ Jesus' ability to minister to men was the immediate result of his perception of their deepest meaning. Indeed, his incomparable spiritual exaltation is revealed in the fact that his conscious identification with divine Love and law was such that he dared to act and speak for God, dared to rephrase the promise in the words "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."
As one thinks of the scope and practical significance of this assurance of the divine ever presence, he begins to understand how it became true of the prophets and saints that they were caught up unto God. Their inspiration, their superiority to circumstance, and their efficiency in preaching the gospel and healing the sick,—all this becomes wholly explicable the moment we understand that they had gained a clear consciousness that God is ever near. Life's consummation is manifestly but an awakening to this fact, and Christian Science is certainly bringing it about. This accounts for every good which it is accomplishing and for every grateful word that is being spoken of it. The demonstrable knowledge of the nearness and availability of infinite good does bring freedom and joy, and withal, that power to stand in the evil day without which Christian profession is not only a failure but a farce. For this, aspiring hearts have always longed, and the one divine event of history today is that overcoming of sickness and sin through Christ which has attended the apprehension of the teaching of Christian Science and which satisfyingly proves anew that God is not afar off, but ever near.
Apprehending that spiritual sense is the radius of his range and demonstration in the realm of the real, and that the knowledge of God is the only true measure of life, one begins to understand why his experience has come so far short, why he has so lamentably failed to express in his life the beauty, the saving power, and the unvarying joy of Truth. Just here, therefore, one often needs to comfort himself with the remembrance that at its best the sense of unworthiness is but the obverse side of aspiration; that hope's vision, the upreach of our better self toward the ideal, the ability to outline, and the longing to attain to the stature of a man who can companion with the infinite,—all this speaks convincingly for the naturalness of such a relation and attainment. No one can dream of and desire a good that does not belong to his true selfhood. The beating of the bird's wings against the fettering cage leave no doubt as to its power to cleave the upper air, and we could not be thus appealed to and solicited by the goodness and beauty of Truth were it not ours by native endowment and inherited capacity. There is therefore no question as to our privilege in Christ if we are thus minded. It is simply a question of learning to relate the divine presence to experience, of learning, as our Leader has counseled, to "trust in Truth, and have no other trusts" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 17).
