Article November 26, 1938 Issue

Divine Adequacy

ROSE L. KEMPTHORNE

A STATEMENT of the fact that adequacy in its highest sense is an attribute of God, which man continuously reflects, may be but slightly comforting to the individual faced with immediate financial necessities and with no apparent prospect of meeting them. Nevertheless, nothing could be of more practical value to him than this truth, understood and firmly claimed. Human reason may argue that money is needed to pay bills and buy food, and so it undoubtedly is. Christ Jesus met such an argument by directing Peter to find tribute money in a fish's mouth, and on another occasion by multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitude. Could anything be more practical? But how did he do it, and is there a law by which similar demonstrations of supply can be made in human affairs today? Yes, there assuredly is.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 492): "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its unlikeness, mortality." Meeting material needs through spiritual reasoning may seem paradoxical, but the Nazarene Prophet proved it to be eminently practicable. His spiritual understanding and right reasoning alone can account for his many manifestations of divine power. Because the Master knew that man's real being is spiritual, comprising all of God's ideas and characterized by all of the divine attributes, he met the lie that man could be lacking in any needful thing with the truth that adequacy, supply, and security are spiritual qualities which man includes, and over which he has dominion. He knew that man reflects all divine qualities, and therefore cannot know lack.

The Master taught his followers to "render ... unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Obediently rendering "unto God the things that are God's," that is, acknowledging that true adequacy, supply, abundance, are spiritual facts, he reflected divine intelligence with which to meet the human requirement, instantly displacing the belief of lack with a practical demonstration of supply.

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