Article March 1, 1919 Issue

Satisfaction

ELEANORA BURDETT CARR

The question of food supply is so continually forced upon the consideration of those who have the task of providing either for themselves or for others, that we may well ponder over the problem and consider some of its aspects from a metaphysical standpoint. It is to be presumed that any student of the Bible and of Mrs. Eddy's writings will have gained the assured vision that the whole subject of sustenance is essentially one to be brought into line with metaphysical understanding. Many beautiful stories which illustrate this truth, from both the Old and the New Testament, crowd into one's thought; for indeed the comforting concept of God as "the Great Householder" (to use the words of one commentator) is expressed in many familiar passages. "The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing," sang the psalmist, and his words typify this idea of the satisfying nature of God as our Father-Mother Love.

Most Christian Scientists will thus have learned to look to the one source of all good when their supplies seem to be threatened by loss or limitation, but the situation which the world has recently had to face has no exact parallel in the past. Limitation in the use of supply during the war was declared to be a universal necessity, and when the system of national rationing of essentials became general, the much tried head of a household had to assume a patient resignation to new and difficult conditions or be shamed into an appearance at least of this attitude lest he should not seem to be "doing his bit" in "helping to win the war." Truly it was inconvenient for people who had prided themselves on their freedom and plenty to find themselves continually struggling with multifarious limitations in the form of registration cards, permits, licenses, prohibitions, or taxation demands, and the seriously reduced state of the family larder was often a matter of dismay to the householder who never before knew what it was to conserve resources.

Some thinkers in every age have more or less clearly perceived the true brotherhood of man, but no amount of material thinking along the lines of socialism, communism, or syndicalism, and so forth, has ever really solved the problem. Immense fortunes and degrading destitution existed side by side in great, self-styled "free" countries, and even in their cities uncontrolled luxury and waste on the one hand and beggary and starvation on the other were, if not approved, at least tolerated and not rendered impossible. The whole problem in fact appeared to the nations of so stupendous a nature that not one among them could master it scientifically. But a new and vital breath has at length blown aside the curtain of dusty and stereotyped has been written inaugurating ages; an immortal sentence has been written inaugurating a new era in human consciousness. Truly says Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 225), "Love is the liberator," and we have yet to demonstrate what supreme power is embodiedin this true idea. The thunder of eternal justice for all and of the law of divine Love is now making itself heard louder than ever before, but humanity has yet to learn many lessons. The state of human thought in the war period just passed is perhaps in the long run not so perilous as the days mankind has called "the piping times of peace."

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