Article September 17, 1921 Issue

What Ye Shall Eat

E. ISABEL BERTSCHY

In the Scriptures we read: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;" that is, man is sustained spiritually. Food as a material substance, then, is but a mortal mind concept of nourishment. To objectors at this point, Christian Science also says that it would be foolish for man to cease eating, drinking, sleeping, and clothing himself materially until that is no longer even seemingly necessary. The fact that the vast part of the human race to-day is living a Nero's life of intemperance in food feasting is generally conceded.

For some time past, dietitians have been trying to regulate this evil through fear of food combinations. Certain properties of matter, they said, when combined with certain other properties were healthful or injurious as the case might be. The great cry still is: Take thought for your body, bow down to it and serve it in awe with your utmost care, for upon it depend the health statistics of our country. The great majority of the men and women devoting time and energy to the betterment of world conditions are professed Christians, and yet in their zeal they have forgotten the admonition of the Master, "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink, or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Why did he consider this sound advice? His whole life's work was proof of its wisdom.

Matter cannot sustain Spirit, for Spirit is self-sustained, being all there is. Food calls to the material senses and says: Smell me; taste me; look at me. The glutton answers greedily and then suffers from excess and wantonness in matter. The dyspeptic pecks gingerly at this and that; then suffers from fear of the diet laws he has imposed upon himself. He who gorges himself at his daily board of extravagance merely to satisfy material appetite is just as much of an inebriate as a so-called drug fiend or liquor lover. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 221), "This new-born understanding, that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, can make one suffer, brings with it another lesson,—that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder of life."

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