Article January 7, 1956 Issue

POSITIVE PROOF

GERALDINE R. ARMSTRONG

In the familiar story of the loaves and the fishes. Jesus' disciples said to him (Matt. 14:15), "This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals." The disciples' dim, material sense of supply did not dismay Jesus, because he knew that the evidence of God's allness can never be lacking. His spiritual understanding replaced the material evidence of inadequacy and lack with the truth that divine Love is constantly caring and providing for every idea. God's reflection, man, cannot be deserted. In reality there is no desert, no empty, unproductive place.

When Jesus said to the disciples (Matt. 14:16), "They need not depart; give ye them to eat," he did not mean that the small amount of food which they had would feed the multitude. Nor did he mean that his preaching would feed the hungry multitude. Seeing the disciples' doubt, Jesus, we are told, took the five loaves and two fishes "and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude." The account concludes, "They did all eat, and were filled."

This proof of Love in action which Jesus gave is a great example to us all. He did not ask the disciples and multitude to believe that God is the source of supply and to believe in His care without the evidence of supply and food. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 218), "The introduction of pure abstractions into Christian Science, without their correlatives, leaves the divine Principle of Christian Science unexplained, tends to confuse the mind of the reader, and ultimates in what Jesus denounced, namely, straining at gnats and swallowing camels."

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