One of the first sentences in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, that becomes fixed in the thought of the neophyte in Christian Science, is the short one to be found on page 494, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." This mighty sentence has brought peace and comfort—yes, progress and healing—to thousands of weary searchers, even before they have more than dimly comprehended its meaning.

"Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need"! What Christian Scientist has not dwelt upon these words with joy, from his first reading of the textbook on through his years of growth? We read them on the walls of many of our churches, and take heart once more. They come to our thought in the hour of trial, and we cling to them as to a comforting friend. As we grow in understanding they take on a new significance. We leave our old interpretation of them behind, and look upon them with new eyes and derive new comfort from their message.

The first message the words bring to us is that divine Love, God, is meeting our needs; that He always has cared and always will care for us. We do not question in what manner this care will manifest itself; we simply accept the statement, and find our hearts refreshed. The fact that it is our human need that is to be met constitutes, no doubt, our first interest in the statement.

If the Christian Science religion stopped at this point and soothed its believers with beautiful statements that vaguely comforted the weary heart but did not arouse thought to grapple with new ideas and understand them, it would simply be another religion added to the already long list; but Christian Science demands that we understand and prove each precept, and think our way to God. We learn as we grow in the understanding of Christian Science that in order to claim the full blessing contained in the statement under consideration we must approach it from the standpoint of our own responsibility in the matter. We know that nothing comes to us without effort on our part; and we begin to question ourselves as to what is required of us in order that we may claim the blessing.

As God is divine Love and man is His reflection, it is obvious that divine Love always has and always will supply every need of His idea or reflection, man. In Science and Health (p. 7) we read of the "all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each need of man is always known and by whom it will be supplied." Since man is spiritual, his every need must be spiritual, and the creator is constantly supplying all. Knowing this, we can lay claim to the spiritual qualities we need, because they are ours by divine right of inheritance. In Galatians we find many spiritual qualities referred to by Paul as the "fruit of the Spirit." He writes, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance;" and he adds that "against such there is no law."

This list shows us clearly the type of thought that emanates from Spirit, which furnishes us with everything we could possibly need. Would any one expressing such qualities have a single need that could not be met instantly by the use of these very qualities? Would he lack any good thing? No! In the presence of such thoughts as these material sense is silenced. Divine Love expressed has met his needs, has opened his eyes to the ever-presence of good.

We realize that we do not arrive at the full understanding and expression of these qualities in a day. Our thoughts must be made over and reshaped to conform to our new spiritual standards; and in the meantime our human experience presses upon us and our human needs demand immediate satisfaction. Immersed in false beliefs, we cry to heaven for a sign: Give me help which I may interpret in terms of my human experience. My human needs are the needs that I feel most acutely. Unless they are met I can know no happiness!

Our human needs—how we dwell upon them! We seem to need so much—health, happiness, a more adequate income, freedom from our fears. And now we come to the paradox, which, however astonishing it may sound, is nevertheless demonstrably true, that the only way we can meet our human needs is to stop thinking about them—to stop thinking about getting well, to stop trying to be happy, to stop dwelling on our financial difficulties. Such needs result from wrong thought conditions, and are not their cause. We must look deeper for the remedy. If we would remove inharmony from our lives, we must find the mental cause of that inharmony and root it out.

We find that just as the realization of good lies in the expression of the spiritual qualities enumerated above, so distress lies in the expression of the opposite qualities, also listed in the fifth chapter of Galatians, and called the "works of the flesh." "Now the works of the flesh ... are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleannes, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." The harboring in our consciousness of any of these types of false thinking results in a sense of lack, or what we call a human need. Infinite supply is always at hand, manifested in the "fruit of the Spirit." So the only human need we can ever really have is the need of ridding our thoughts of these obstructing "works of the flesh," in order that God's supply of right ideas may fill our thought.

There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about this method. It consists simply in the substitution of true thoughts for false. And this is our need and our requirement before we can reap the benefits of improved conditions. Let us stop watching the body to see why it does not get well, stop searching for happiness, stop worrying about the money in our purse that seems so meager when we seem to need so much, and let divine Love supply our human needs by the reflecting of its qualities in our lives. Is one of our human needs better health? Then meet this need by reflecting the qualities of God, or "fruit of the Spirit," in our lives. Do we need happiness and peace? Again the "fruit of the Spirit" supplies the remedy. Whatever would impede our progress, prevent us from meeting our obligations, or limit our development in any direction, indicates a lack of the "fruit of the Spirit" in our lives, a lack that is only seeming, however, since divine Love always has supplied and always will abundantly supply these qualities, if we will but make room for them.

Our greatest difficulty lies in our disinclination to make the mental effort necessary to improve our thought condition. In Science and Health (p. 218) Mrs. Eddy says, "What renders both sin and sickness difficult of cure is, that the human mind is the sinner, disinclined to self-correction, and believing that the body can be sick independently of mortal mind and that the divine Mind has no jurisdiction over the body." But the minute we overcome this disinclination and begin to replace our false thoughts with the true, we find our human condition improving, our human needs being supplied.

If we had to wait until we thoroughly understood divine Love and had acquired sufficient humility fully to express it in our lives before we began to reap the benefits of our efforts, we might appear to have but little reward in this material existence, and heaven would still seem far off and unattainable; but Christian Scientists have found that divine Love begins to meet their human needs the moment they begin to shape their lives after a higher pattern. In order consciously to reflect divine Love in our lives, Love's opposites must be cast out of our thoughts. When we have begun to get the mastery over hate, malice, injustice, self-importance, and such like, what happens? There is not a shadow of doubt but that with the disappearance of these disturbing qualities, our health will improve, our peace will become more secure, our work will be done better, our business conditions will become more stable.

Thus it is that divine Love meets our human needs. The battle ground is in our own thought. Nothing can thwart, or hinder, or stop right thinking; and as soon as that begins to operate in our consciousness, our human needs will be met. As thinking improves, all that pertains to us will improve; but self-knowledge and honesty are absolutely necessary before we can make any permanent progress. It is our work to bring forth the "fruit of the Spirit," and nothing can hinder us from learning how to do this. As we rise, our needs change with our growth; and divine Love does always meet them!