HOW many times have you said to yourself when an unusually large task seemed pressing, "I don't know where to begin"?
Paul told the Athenians where to begin when he stood in the midst of Mars' Hill and looked about at the confusion of religious beliefs in their city. He saw them "wholly given to idolatry" (Acts 17:16), and he spoke out to them clearly: "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."
The remedy for this ignorant devotion to an unknown God, Paul implied, was the understanding of God Almighty as creator of heaven and earth and of man's place in this universe as His offspring. Paul's remedy propounded to the Athenians was not just a moving speech; rather it was a restatement of the teachings of Christ Jesus, who only a few years before Paul's preaching stated with revolutionary authority (Matt. 6:33), "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
False worship and ignorance appear in the experience of mankind today. And the same way out of the turmoil is present for those who will accept the basic rule for solving every problem, large or small, individual or collective, in home or nation. Mrs. Eddy has set this forth for her followers in simple language. She says in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health (p. 275): "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle. To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is."
If one is trying to balance a bank account, he begins by aligning his thought with the rules of mathematics. It would be impossible to add, subtract, or multiply without using the science of numbers. The same simple procedure—turning away from the problem to the specific scientific fact, which we call the truth—is necessary in every experience.
One day the writer answered the telephone and heard the voice of a little child crying out: "I hurt! I hurt!" The writer thought for a moment, trying to recognize the voice, and then said, "Dear, not long ago you learned that God is everywhere."
There was a long silence; then a deep sigh of relief, with the answer: "Oh, I know that. What did I call you for?"
Later, when the mother called and expressed astonishment that her little five-year-old had been able to dial her friend, she said the child had been screaming with pain. The mother had a business caller and had sent the little girl to her room until she could talk with her about God. But the child decided to settle the matter immediately, and at once the reminder that God is everywhere healed her. Soon the child went out to play with the neighborhood children, her "hurt" completely out of consciousness.
The simple faith of a little child, the acceptance of the premise that if God is omnipresent, nothing else can be present, is another way of utilizing the starting point of Christian Science that "God, Spirit, is All-in-all."
Equally important in what mortal mind calls more difficult cases of need is the necessity to deny the claims of another presence and power. The clamor for recognition, the insistence of aggressive suggestion through the testimony of the five physical senses, needs to be seen as superstition. It is believing in an unknown God. All claims of evil suggest cause and power, and, more often than not, mankind try to figure out what caused the physical distress. Clearly, this is devoting thought to a false god. To believe in a power apart from the one God, good, is disobedience to the First Commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
In "Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy," Irving C. Tomlinson quotes these words from a letter of Mrs. Eddy's (pp. 84, 85): "Did you but know the sublimity of your hope; the infinite capacity of your being; the grandeur of your outlook, you would let error kill itself. Error comes to you for life, and you give it all the life it has." Starting with God and His manifestation, man, we find that error has no claim in the allness of perfection.
If one is in the kingdom of heaven, how can he be in pain? He is not. If the kingdom of God is within him, as Jesus taught, how can a sore or an accumulation of poison be in him? It is not. If our starting point is God and His omnipresent goodness, how can evil be present? It cannot be. If we know that God is All, how can we worry about the unknown? We cannot.
The overturning that is taking place in the world today has been prophesied down through the ages. It is an ever-recurring pattern. So long as men give error life—worship material things and unknown quantities—they will struggle with a false sense of cause and try to avert effect. But the Christian who would solve his problems must start with God. He can take heart with Paul's further words to the Athenians, that not only hath God "made the world and all things therein," but He "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."
Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned
and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou
hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast
known the holy scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith
which is in Christ Jesus.—II Timothy 3:14, 15.
