Thirteen years ago my husband and I went on a walking trip in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the third day we were forced to discontinue the trip because of a stiffness which developed in my knees, an ailment, as I have since learned, that is common to hikers.
For one reason or another we never took an extended hike again, until in the summer of 1946 we fulfilled our promise to take our three sons on such a trip. We planned to be on the trail for a week, and while I looked forward to it with a great deal of pleasure, I also felt some misgivings. As the time of our departure drew near, the tempter was very much in evidence, and I wondered, since I had not been able to complete the previous trip, what assurance I had that I could do it now, or that it might not be even more difficult for me. However, I did not accept the arguments. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 248), "Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom." I reasoned that I had made much progress in the intervening years, and with the experience of class instruction and the ability to put Christian Science into practice more extensively, my thinking now was on a distinctly higher plane, and that therefore I had every assurance that I could make the grade this time.
And so we set out; but on the afternoon of the second day one of my knees began to bother me, and I felt like Job when he said (Job 3:25), "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me." I knew immediately, however, that the first thing to handle was fear, in accordance with Mrs. Eddy's instructions on page 411 of Science and Health, and in this connection I remembered some verses from Psalms which I had read just the week before (53:2, 5): "God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. . . . There were they in great fear, where no fear was." There certainly seemed to be plenty of fear, but if God saw that there really was none, then I could be afraid only because I believed in a mind separate from God. "For," as Paul says in his second epistle to Timothy (1:7), "God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." "A sound mind"—one free from the beliefs of the flesh.
