The world is seeking everywhere for a solution to its problems—its pains, its sorrows, its poverty, and its wars. Analyses of many kinds are being made as to the cause and cure of these discordant conditions. Probably no word is used more often in these analyses than the word symptom. "Watch out for symptoms," the physical, economic, and political arbiters of the day say—symptoms of deterioration and disease, of disability and age, of discontent and unrest, of disintegration and war. In the press and on the radio symptoms indicative of these ills are constantly being broadcast to the public.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes of symptoms, not of deterioration but of recovery, when she asks in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 100), "Who remembers that patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are the symptoms by which our Father indicates the different stages of man's recovery from sin and his entrance into Science?" Patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection! If we will but heed her words and look within ourselves for such symptoms, we shall most assuredly find the solution to all our problems, both individual and collective.
What wonderful symptoms these are! Patience! Patience, which in its true meaning implies absolute confidence in and reliance upon God. It is only the impatient who struggle and strive, who fuss and fret; and they do so because they are not wholly relying upon God, are not obeying God's command (Ps. 46: 10), "Be still, and know that I am God," know that God is our rock, our deliverer, our refuge.
