Article December 7, 1935 Issue

Our Great Need

W. STUART BOOTH

The Psalmist must have glimpsed the great fact that all good is in and of God, and he also must have recognized the total inadequacy of materiality to supply humanity's need for a satisfying sense of intelligence, health, peace, happiness, and life. In closing the seventeenth Psalm, which is in the form of a prayer to God, the Psalmist said, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Christ Jesus spoke even more plainly and directly when, in what is called the Sermon on the Mount, he counseled against seeking material riches and also against looking to and taking anxious thought for the human body. Then he gave affirmative spiritual direction in these words, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," to which he added the promise that all needed things would follow this right seeking.

The Master did much more than offer this Christianly scientific advice, for in his experiences and demonstrations he furnished verification of the practicality of seeking first the kingdom or government of God, Truth, in one's thinking and living. Because divine Mind literally governed his motives and desires, his thoughts and actions, Christ Jesus was able to apply the ever-operative and irresistible law of Love and Life in the meeting of the human need for health, food, tax money, freedom, and protection from harm. He knew that the need of mankind is not what men who are ignorant of spiritual reality imagine it to be; Jesus considered and dealt with mental causes, whereas materially-minded men regard matter as both cause and effect, and are limited by and suffer from accepting and acting upon that erroneous assumption.

After she had discovered the Science which lay back of Christ Jesus' marvelous spiritual healing and redemptive works and had verified her discovery by demonstration, Mary Baker Eddy shared with the world the revelation which had come to her. She wrote "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which accurately acquaints men with divine Principle and confers that spiritual understanding whereby the problems which arise in connection with health, business, and human relations may be solved. Among the statements therein which are correlative to Christ Jesus' counsel in the Sermon on the Mount is this one on page 4: "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds." Surely love, patience, and good deeds are indicative of the kingdom of God or the government of divine Principle in human consciousness, which our wise Master urged us to seek first.

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Walking with God
December 7, 1935
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