Christian science offers the remedy for all the troubles of the human race, including debt. It provides the basis for correct thinking, which is inevitably followed by right human action. This Science of Life holds the solution to all the vexing problems of human existence. Patient and persistent study of its teachings through the various channels provided by its Discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy, and determination to apply and practice its rules, are the way out of the various forms of bondage with which mankind has bound itself.

The question of debt goes deeper than the matter of owing money for goods received or services rendered. Jesus recognized this when he taught his followers to pray (Matt. 6:12), "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Mrs. Eddy, in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 17), interprets this petition in the Lord'sPrayer as, "And Love is reflected in love." This indicates the method by which all debt can be ruled out of human experience. "Love is reflected in love" is the divine law of reciprocity, and reciprocity in its spiritual sense leaves no room for unpaid debts.

A son once wrote to his mother that he intended to give up a promising sea career and to make a home with her because he felt indebted to her for all that she had done for him. Sensing the devotion that was prepared to make such a sacrifice and seeing the shadows of indebtedness which would restrict his activity, she assured him that she did not need him and that he was free at the present to follow the career he had chosen. All that she had done for him had been by the grace of God and had brought her great spiritual gain. As she saw it, the debt was already paid in his willingness to make the sacrifice, and he was to pursue his vocation free from all sense of indebtedness, except to continue to express his love in all wise ways.

So often the remembrance of favors done in the past for others makes us look expectantly to them for present favors, thus robbing us of radical reliance upon the Giver of all good—God. Pestered by such reasoning quite recently, the writer took a firm stand for the truth. "In reality, these friends owe me nothing," she declared vigorously to herself, "and I owe them nothing except to love them. We are under no obligation to each other except to express that love in terms of substance and reality. All the good they possess or ever have possessed is theirs by reflection of God. My need is not to look to them for good, but to God. His love for me is my sufficiency, and He gives that love in the forms of His own outlining, which includes a normal and just relationship between my friends and me." This new line of reasoning broke the mesmerism that was holding her thought to human ways and means as the provision of good. Before the day was out, her need was met most graciously.

All through the writer's childhood days the dark shadow of debt seemed to hang over her family, suggesting limitation of normal activities and enjoyments, uncertainty, and fear. It haunted her early married days, continued to persist, despite all human efforts and sacrifice to gain a clear balance sheet. And then came Christian Science with its promise of freedom from all that is unlike good. How well she remembers the light breaking upon her thought when first she glimpsed the stupendous truth that supply is wholly spiritual because God is its infinite source, and that therefore debt is a bogy of the carnal, or mortal, mind. She literally felt as though hands were lifting a great load of responsibility from her shoulders.

In due time the balance sheet was clean. It followed the further enlightening thought (James 1:17), "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." She reasoned that if all good comes as a gift from God, it carries no material price with it. In that moment she accepted with assurance the fact that debt is unnatural, unknown to God and man, and this truth, realized, enabled her to pay her debt.

Man, God's idea, is never in debt, for his supply is spiritual. Man is the reflection of God, and by reason of his coexistence with Mind, the all-inclusive consciousness of good, he knows no need. Man, the manifestation of God, includes all right ideas. He knows his perfection and completeness and possesses by reflection the ideas of sufficiency, abundance, and affluence. He knows nothing of lack, because there is no such thing to know. God is his inexhaustible supply. He knows no limitation or unfulfilled longings, because he is eternally satisfied.

"Imparting has not impoverished, can never impoverish, the divine Mind," our revered Leader states in Science and Health (p. 519). Mind's giving is not the parting with its own substance, at the expense of itself, to something outside of itself. God's giving is in loving, living, knowing, and being; and man partakes of the nature of God's giving in his reflection of the divine by loving, living, knowing, and being what God has created him to be. God is not withholding good, nor is man in his reflection of perfect God withholding any part of God's goodness. It is according to the law of God that man should continuously and eternally express omnipresent good.

The fact that demand and supply are one ensures one's ability to meet every demand made upon him for the expression of Life, Truth, and Love. Understanding these fundamental truths, making them the basis of one's reasoning, and maintaining them when material sense with its cry of shortages, lack, and insufficiency clamors for recognition, breaks the mesmerism of false belief. What happens? Evil, masquerading as lack, gives place to the abundance of good, which meets the human need.

An infallible recipe for the continuous demonstration of supply is to be found on page 307 of "Miscellaneous Writings." There Mrs. Eddy says: "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies. Never ask for tomorrow: it is enough that divine Love is an ever-present help; and if you wait, never doubting, you will have all you need every moment." Surely, this corroborates the Master's teaching on the subject (Matt. 6:25, 33, 34): "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink. ... But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

Christian Science provides the scientific method by which mankind can meet every debt through utilizing the absolute truths, as elucidated in its textbook, of God, man, and His spiritual creation of ideas.