Article March 28, 1925 Issue

"The poor in spirit"

HARRY C. MOORHEAD

One of the Beatitudes which often puzzles young students of the Bible is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven." The question often arises with them, How is spiritual poverty to help one in gaining the kingdom of heaven, as promised by Christ Jesus in his masterful Sermon on the Mount? It may be stated that to be spiritually poor will help us in humility, because it causes us to acknowledge our need for divine nourishment, to turn from the false sense of material life, and to seek the kingdom of heaven through spiritual understanding.

When the prodigal son had drunk the last bitter dregs of the sensuous cup and had eaten the very husks of materiality, he realized his plight and exclaimed, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!" With this realization of his folly he turned, and in humility went home to the father, who received him with open arms and a heart full of joy and thanksgiving.

We are all prodigals in a greater or lesser degree, because we all have wandered from the Father's house through the various bypaths of mortal belief. In detail, each of us may have a different experience to relate, but the fact that we are not in the kingdom of heaven, which Mrs. Eddy defines in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 590) as "the reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme," is due to the same cause,—spiritual poverty. In proportion to our realization and acknowledgment of this condition, and our struggle to overcome our false beliefs of pleasure and pain, of life and intelligence in matter and material living, are we at home in the consciousness of divine Love, or, as Jesus said, in the kingdom of heaven.

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