The more extended or the more intimate become one's opportunities to observe the struggles of the human heart, the more is one convinced that no individual experience is altogether unique, but rather that all men have essentially the same problems to solve. The beginning and the development of human experience, the disillusionment and the questionings, follow broadly the same outlines in all instances. The microcosm of the personal and the particular patterns the universal belief. The purpose that runs through individual experience is the purpose that governs the universe. That there seems to be, in many instances, apparently purposeless and futile human living does not refute this fact; it indicates only a postponement of individual or general recognition of the divine purpose. But it is well for those who are ready, to admit with the poet, "Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs;" for, having recognized the fact, one may then devote himself to gaining a demonstrable understanding of the divine intent.
Each one must eventually emerge from all mortal beliefs concerning existence into the understanding and realization of being as spiritual. History shows that this emergence has often, though not necessarily, been attended by suffering. When the individual is passing through the period of learning how to "take forth the precious from the vile," he may believe that his sufferings are unusual. Those before him, however, have reached and passed the point where he is waging what he believes to be his peculiar battle; and those contemporary with him are engaged, in one way or another, in temporarily resisting, or in learning, the same lesson.
If, therefore, one is tempted to think that he alone has a burden to endure, he may profitably turn from a too intense contemplation of his own problem to scan the history of the human race, as it is portrayed in the Bible, and as it has since in some form repeated itself. There one may see the continuous struggle of the higher perceptions against the bondage in which the material senses would hold the individual and humanity. Darkness, struggle, light, progress,—the particulars vary, but the heart of the problem is ever the same. The periods of the darkness and the struggle are, and have always been, longer or shorter for the nations or for the individual, according to the readiness or the reluctance to surrender false materialistic beliefs; but with the light of understanding comes the certain sense of victory and advancement; for always may be traced the motif, the purpose of spiritual love to draw men onward, upward, toward God, divine Mind. In her definition of "Abraham" in the Glossary to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" p. 579, Mrs. Eddy explains that "this patriarch illustrated the purpose of Love to create trust in good." This trust, quickened into intelligent obedience to divine Principle, is humanity's certain means to freedom.
