Null Reference Exception For An Unknown Reason

I am currently making my first game on Unity. I haven't been having any major problems so far until I tried to make a pause button. In a different scene I accessed the text of a button by declaring it as a public variable and I had no problems. In the scene for one of my levels I tried to do the same thing with the text of the pause button and I got a null reference exception. I know the text is assigned to the script but it still gives me the error, "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object PlayerController.Pause () (at Assets/Scripts/PlayerController.cs:268) UnityEngine.Events.InvokableCall.Invoke (System.Object[] args) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/UnityEvent.cs:153) UnityEngine.Events.InvokableCallList.Invoke (System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/UnityEvent.cs:634) UnityEngine.Events.UnityEventBase.Invoke (System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/UnityEvent.cs:769) UnityEngine.Events.UnityEvent.Invoke () (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/UnityEvent_0.cs:53) UnityEngine.UI.Button.Press () (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Extensions/guisystem/UnityEngine.UI/UI/Core/Button.cs:35) UnityEngine.UI.Button.OnPointerClick (UnityEngine.EventSystems.PointerEventData eventData) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Extensions/guisystem/UnityEngine.UI/UI/Core/Button.cs:44) UnityEngine.EventSystems.ExecuteEvents.Execute (IPointerClickHandler handler, UnityEngine.EventSystems.BaseEventData eventData) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Extensions/guisystem/UnityEngine.UI/EventSystem/ExecuteEvents.cs:52) UnityEngine.EventSystems.ExecuteEvents.Execute[IPointerClickHandler] (UnityEngine.GameObject target, UnityEngine.EventSystems.BaseEventData eventData, UnityEngine.EventSystems.EventFunction`1 functor) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Extensions/guisystem/UnityEngine.UI/EventSystem/ExecuteEvents.cs:269) UnityEngine.EventSystems.EventSystem:Update()" I don't know what the problem is. I am simply trying to compare the text of the button to the string "Pause" with the code: if (pauseText.text == "Pause).