Editorial February 22, 1930 Issue

"Our daily bread"

Duncan Sinclair

In the Lord's Prayer occurs the entreaty, "Give us this day our daily bread." And on page 17 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy gives the "spiritual sense," as she terms it, of the words, thus: "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections." Like the great Master, our Leader knew that man, the real spiritual man, does not live by matter but by the grace of God, through the continuous activity of God's law. Jesus' reply to the words of the tempter, "If thou be the Son of God, Command that these stones be made bread," was, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

We are considering an important theme here, a theme in which everyone should be interested, and one upon which many have bestowed a great deal of thought; and the question will present itself, How are we to regard what are generally spoken of as the material necessities of life, while remembering that spiritual man is sustained by Spirit, God? It cannot be denied that mortals, holding the material beliefs they do, seem to require material sustenance; and material sustenance they will continue to seem to need until thought has been entirely spiritualized. It is recognition of this that causes the Christian to help the needy in their distress, providing the outcast with shelter and the famished with bread. But the Christian Scientist knows that in doing this alone the need is not being fully met, and that the Christian obligation is fully met only when, through the understanding of divine Science, the need for help no longer appears to exist.

It is important that the needy shall come to see that the meeting of their temporary material necessities is subsidiary to the supplying of their spiritual requirements, and that they should therefore "seek . . . first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto [them]." It is sometimes no easy task to turn the thought enmeshed in material concerns, engulfed in the belief of lack and perhaps surrounded by sinful conditions, from belief in matter to the understanding of Spirit, as true substance. But, as Christian Science maintains, this must be done if the victory is to be won over the mesmerism of poverty.

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