Article March 19, 1927 Issue

Human Needs

GERTRUDE ASPLEN

The tendency of mortals to classify human needs as wholly physical was rebuked by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, when he said: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? ... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Christian Science bases its interpretation of human need upon the admonition and promise of this Scripture. The students of this teaching make no pretension to sensational exploits, and in all humility acknowledge how small is their present achievement compared with the fullness of promise; but their faith is established in the proved fact, as given by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." This truth is the staff upon which they lean at every stage of experience. Before it poverty gives place to sufficiency, sickness to health, and sin to a purified sense of being.

The temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, as recorded by Matthew in the chapter preceding the Sermon on the Mount, are familiar to every Bible student, and illustrate in a helpful manner dominion through one's knowledge of God over the claims of lack, fear, limitation, ever suggesting themselves through the material senses. The statement that Jesus was "led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" has probably on more than one occasion bewildered for a time the thought that is just beginning to grasp the great fact that Spirit, God, is infinite good, to whom evil is unknown. Let it be said to such that the interpretation of the word "wilderness" given by Mrs. Eddy on page 597 of Science and Health will bring light and revelation, showing that Spirit does lead each one up to the experience through which he can best prove God's omnipotence, where he can, in proportion to his understanding and willingness to conform to his highest standard, meet every false mortal belief which Truth has laid bare to him, and annul its claim.

The press of material thoughts and the unbalanced concept of human needs may seem to create an atmosphere of "loneliness; doubt; darkness" (ibid.) as the student takes this upward mental journey. But divinely guided, he climbs above these mists into wider visions of Truth, where he finds "spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence."

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