Editorial April 8, 1933 Issue

True Sustenance

W. Stuart Booth

During times of trials and tribulation Bible students frequently have found encouragement, confidence, and inspiration in studying the Scriptural accounts of the sustaining of those Israelites who trusted in the one God. In praising God's goodness, as realized by their fathers, the priests and the Levites in Jerusalem sang: "Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them, and withheldest not thy manna from their mouth, and gavest them water for their thirst. Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in the wilderness." Likewise the availability of divine law was proved by Elijah when he, the widow of Zarephath, and her son had provision many days although material sense testified to a meager supply—"but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse." Elisha fed a hundred men from an apparently small store of food. Christ Jesus reversed the sense of lack and fed multitudes with a few loaves and fishes by means of his spiritual understanding that all causation and substance are in Mind, divine Love, and that matter is but a mortally mental concept objectified.

Christian Science so clearly reveals the truth about God and His ever operative law of abundance that these experiences are seen as natural demonstrations of divine power. Mrs. Eddy saw and stated the fact that the sustaining love of God is ever active and available to men. Assuring, indeed, are the first words in the Preface to her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." In this book Mrs. Eddy explains how we may lean on, trust in, and understand the sustaining, infinite God. This she does by acquainting us with God as our loving Father-Mother, whose guidance and government, providence and protection, exceed humanity's highest hopes. Christ Jesus pointed to this when he said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

Christian Science not only acquaints us with our Father-Mother God as divine Love, all-knowing Mind, all-governing Principle, but makes this true concept provable and practical in meeting humanity's every need. An experience of an earnest student of Christian Science will serve as a helpful and instructive illustration. When his employer was handled by fear of failure, limitation, and loss, and announced a great reduction of wages, he quickly recognized that it was his duty and privilege as a Christian Scientist to combat the erroneous thought-conditions. Remembering that the basis of right thinking is the great fact that God, good, is the only Mind, the source of all true thought, this student excluded fear, resentment, and discouragement from his consciousness.

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