Article April 21, 1917 Issue

Unfailing Supply

LOU-VEE B. SIEGFRIED

Typical of that of thousands today is the experience of the woman who came to Elisha for help, as recounted in the fourth chapter of II Kings. This lesson, metaphysically understood, points out the way in which all the problems of humanity are to be solved, namely, by trusting and obedient appeal to divine law. The woman's pitiful words, "My husband is dead," express the helplessness and defeat of all human calculations. Cruden defines the word dead as having in the Scriptures another meaning than that of mere physical dissolution,—"a state of spiritual death, being void of grace, ... unable to do anything that is spiritually good." Jesus used the word in that sense when he said to the disciple who sought permission to go first to bury his father before following the Master, "Let the dead bury their dead."

Since time out of mind the word husband, in turn, has implied certain mental elements not at all confined to the male head of a household, but shared in greater or less degree by all mortals according to their beliefs. The word embraces the sense of authority supported by physical strength, initiative; it implies the providing and caretaking of material possessions, and so on. May it not be said of any one, then, who has spent his years dependent on material means or human personality for happiness, supply, strength, health, or livelihood, and who has come to the end of his human hopes, to disappointment and despair, that his condition is analogous to that of the woman who said, "My husband is dead"? Have not his human reliances and theories proven impotent to help him spiritually?

This is the mental state in which so many are when, through a rift in the clouds, there comes the recollection of some benefit which others have been known to experience in Christian Science, which today brings, as did the visions of the prophets of old, the assurance of Immanuel, or "God with us." The woman of the record had doubtless often come in contact with the works of the prophets who understandingly applied God's law to countless problems; hence it was natural that she should take to the man of God the problem which so pressed her. Elisha, with self-immolation and humility such as Jesus demonstrated when he said, "I can of mine own self do nothing," first asked her, "What shall I do for thee?" He did not tell her of a way to evade the debt, or offer to lend her money, but he did so help her, with the light of his understanding of the law of God, to work out her own problem, that there would be no doubt in her thought that God is the all sufficient source of good.

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