Editorial August 10, 1918 Issue

"Feed my sheep"

William D. McCrackan

The call comes to feed the hungry hearts with the vision of spiritual truth, with the bread of heaven, the reflection of divine Love; to transcend the narrow confines of human justice, and in noble imitation of the Father-Mother to let our light shine upon the just and the unjust. Spiritual understanding pierces the covering of secret evil. It shows the belief in matter to be baseless, and physical law to be subject to the law of God. The Word of God pursues evil under sea, both in the earth beneath and in the water under the earth. It flies into the air realm and directs the sentinels how to forestall the evil intent of the enemy, to frustrate the secret attack by taking from it its secrecy.

After his resurrection, after that memorable last joyous feast with his disciples, Jesus charged Peter with great impressiveness to feed his sheep. Three times he asked him, "Lovest thou me?" Love alone can provide a sufficient motive for the watching of the true shepherd and for the spiritual endurance with which to feed the sheep. Shepherds who rely upon dogma and doctrine or upon a mere sense of duty, who follow a ritualistic routine through fear or superstition, lose metaphysics and become wolves who instead of feeding the flocks feed upon them. Mrs. Eddy gave the following necessary rebuke: "Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all. His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and he left his legacy of truth to mankind" (Miscellany, p. 303). When Jesus fed the five thousand he fed the whole of human consciousness. To-day The Mother Church in feeding the five thousand of its seating capacity likewise feeds the world, though the world may know it not.

The cry of the world is for bread, but in reality this bread is not material. Question any supplicant long enough and deep enough and you will find the heart hunger underlying the cry. Mankind strives, competes, toils, fears, and agonizes seemingly for material possessions but really for mental ones, for happiness, peace, safety, harmony. Mrs. Eddy understood humanity's plea when on page 17 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she interpreted spiritually the prayer "Give us this day our daily bread," as "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections." Grace may seem to be a strange substitute for bread to the unenlightened, but whoever possesses grace possesses wealth. No good thing can be denied to those who have "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," the ability and authority to feed the sheep with Life, Truth, and Love. Those who feed are fed in return,—this is the law of God and is demonstrable in Christian Science. The affections cannot be famished when they are enriched by giving. Therefore to obey Jesus' injunction, "Feed my sheep," is to find the way to heavenly riches, and temporary necessities will not fail as long as human consciousness calls for them. This is the comfort of the Comforter, divine Science, that there can be no real failure of food, no financial stringency, no lack of labor, no paralysis of life or limb, no mental inertia in the kingdom of heaven, and that heaven is here and now for those who feed the sheep.

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