Article May 8, 1915 Issue

Spiritual Demand

AGNES MORLEY CLEAVELAND

In talking with an older student, one who had just turned to Christian Science for the solution of his problems remarked: "If my supply is from God, I do not see how God is going to pay my rent and my grocery bill. I must have material things so long as I am in the flesh." It was the statement that supply is spiritual which led to this expression that a spiritual supply could not meet a material demand.

This question was fully answered by Jesus of Nazareth. In the sixth chapter of Matthew one finds a clear, positive statement of this question and its answer. Mankind has read this teaching for sixteen hundred years or more, and yet has closed the Bible only to go back to the old joyless struggle for what is termed "a living." And only when Mrs. Eddy with spiritual vision saw the true import of Jesus' teaching and declared it to the world, did men begin once more to prove the truth of his words. Mrs. Eddy shattered the fallacy which had obscured the truth, by her revolutionary statement on page 468 of Science and Health, where in answer to the question "What is substance?" she says: "Substance is that which is eternal and incapable of discord and decay. . . . Spirit, the synonym of Mind, Soul, or God, is the only real substance. The spiritual universe, including individual man, is a compound idea, reflecting the divine substance of Spirit."

It is because mortal man has been indulging in the Adam-dream that he has misconceived the spiritual universe and called both it and himself matter. When we seek to apply this to our particular problem as to how we are to meet our apparent material demands, we see at once that the only real demand is that we shall reflect God's image and likeness; not that we shall "make a living," but that we shall spiritually live; that we shall be what God means His children to be. Is it conceivable that God's demand is not eternally met? Certainly not. Man as God's image and likeness is already the recipient of all godliness or goodness, but this man is not the Adam-man which Mrs. Eddy characterizes as "an inverted image of Spirit; . . . the usurper of Spirit's creation" (Science and Health, p. 580).

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