Article November 26, 1921 Issue

The Famine That Ends Famine

JAMES C. THOMAS

Ben Jonson undoubtedly intended one thing and a very grim one, when he said famine ends famine, but the Christian metaphysician, if privileged to so so, may find in his words something diametrically opposite to his meaning—may find a scientific fact based upon divine Principle. For there is a famine or complete absence of matter that means the full presence of Spirit or Mind and its idea, and this famine is the unqualified, forever destroyer of the belief of human starvation. In other words, the famine that is good, provided one use that expression, is the entire absence of evil. Such a total lack of wrong sense is actually rich spirituality, characteristic of the infinite God, and is an absolutely present abundance that exceeds all the crops the world has ever gathered. Thus famine of mortal beliefs ends the belief of human famine and suffering, replacing these lying shadows with ever present, spiritual reality.

As a consequence, the problem of humanity, and of every individual in it, must be primarily the being sure that it is not hugging to itself material beliefs and trust in things that cannot save. This is the simple way of having plenty. All that is necessary is the elimination of false belief, for with its going the actual plenty that is always here is discerned. The first step, then, is not to count the grain sacks in the barns but to eliminate the enslaving notion that infinite Mind made a world with a deficiency. What Mind has made is its own spiritual reflection, and to assert or fear a partial world famine is to turn one's back on metaphysics and to claim either that perfect Mind has made the imperfect or that infinite Mind itself is imperfect. The claim in either case would be an absurdity. The surest way to feed and clothe the world is by the demonstrated presence of infinite good or God. When Mind is adhered to, the grain sacks will be found ample, just as in the case of the widow of Zarephath, "the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail."

It has been a human ideal that a household should have a bread winner, a provider of bread. This homely rule is useful as an illustration of what the world needs and what it in verity has. The world when most rolling in material prosperity has been most in need, has been most famine-stricken in its lack of discernment of exhaustless Mind as the great forever provider, a God who is God "at hand,"—Mind who is infinite, everywhere, on the lonely steppes of Russia as in the most crowded of cities. "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?"

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