Article July 21, 1945 Issue

Reducing Indebtedness

RITA BERMAN

During a Sunday service in a large and beautiful metropolitan edifice, a branch Christian Science church, the announcement was read from the desk, "The collection today will be devoted to reducing the indebtedness of this church." The writer heard these words gravely, depressed as she was by a twofold problem, a large business debt and a limited personal income, which made it difficult for her to make even small contributions. Hence it was with an extreme sense of human helplessness and deep humility that she lifted a prayer so fervid as to seem almost audible: How shall I reduce indebtedness? And— swiftly, definitely, and imperatively came this answering angel to her humble, heartfelt call: "Magnify solvency!"

These two commanding words, instantly recognized as the very opposite of the phrase "reduce indebtedness." were at once accepted as a spiritual refutation or negation of that phrase with all its material implications. The demand to mortal consciousness— material-mindedness—to "magnify solvency" actually appeared as a light that by its own spiritual power began to dispel the false sense of insolvency or debt. It brought an illumined sense of the whole universe as expressing the glory of God, governed by His law of love, and of His spiritual ideas, each showing forth the nature, character, and substance of unlimited and illimitable good.

How can there be an element of debt in the man who is the image and likeness, the reflection, of God? God, the creator, whom man and the universe reflect, can owe nothing to His own creation, His own expression. Mary Baker Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 5), "Wholly apart from this mortal dream, this illusion and delusion of sense. Christian Science comes to reveal man as God's image, His idea, coexistent with Him —God giving all and man having all that God gives."

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The Child of a King
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