Many people agree in theory that everyone should have a fair share in the good things of life. But there is little general agreement about the way to accomplish this.

Material methods may advocate either a taking from one to give to another or a willingness to accept a smaller portion all around. Some would like to make everyone's share exactly the same. Christian Science presents quite a different— a spiritual—way.

Because this way has a spiritual basis, not a material one, it stresses the inherent universality of spiritual being. God is Spirit. Man is spiritual. Substance is spiritual, consisting of spiritual qualities. God blesses man by providing him with the substance of these qualities, and this substance is infinite and inexhaustible.

The understanding of this not only enriches the quality of individual life but penetrates into every aspect of experience, making us more useful, more active, more intelligent, more productive. What we call the good things of life are shown to be not an objective but an accompaniment of more spiritual, less materialistic thinking. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the fatherhood and motherhood of God. Spirit names and blesses all." ^{Science and Health, p. 507;}

How does a recognition of this spiritual provision help the individual who feels he doesn't get his fair share of good, who, for example, may be in desperate need of food and clothing? Recognition of God's goodness changes his thought. He becomes more open, more expectant, more expansive in outlook and gains a different view of himself and everyone else—a different perception of God, a different concept of where blessings come from and what they are like. He stops thinking of himself as a mortal—blessed or unblessed: he is not deprived and fighting for his rights, or successfully hanging on to what he has, or discovering a new way to get what he wants!

Instead, he begins to grasp something of his spiritual identity as included in God's creation—uniquely individual with a place of his own, a purpose of his own, a blessing of his own. This blessing is the fundamental one of being the child of a just and gracious God. Not a selfish policy of every man for himself, this approach indicates recognition of a divine order in which full use is made of each and every idea and quality. And such recognition does have a practical effect in improving human conditions. Christ Jesus illustrated something of true blessedness and its impact on humanity in what we call the Beatitudes. He said, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." ^{Matt. 5:5;}

What sort of meekness is this? Not the meekness of servility but that of acknowledged dependence on God. Not starting off with an ambition to inherit the earth and then trying to be meek enough to qualify; rather, meekness as an innate quality of man, God's reflection. Expressing meekness, we do not look for more or better matter but find Spirit's dominion over matter and material circumstances.

Jesus also said, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." ^{v. 7;} Mercifulness is evidence of our willingness to care about each other.

Meekness and mercifulness help fulfill Jesus' two commandments to love God and to love each other, on which he said hung all the law and the prophets (see Matt. 22:37-40). If meekness and mercy are allowed to lie dormant, they do not bless anyone.

It is reported that at the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church in 1906 the then President, William P. McKenzie, said: "No one can change the law of Christian metaphysics, the law of right thinking, nor in any wise alter its effects. It is a forever fact that the meek and lowly in heart are blessed and comforted by divine Love. If the proud are lonely and uncomforted, it is because they have thoughts adverse to the law of love." ^{Quoted in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany by Mrs. Eddy, p. 41;}

The law of metaphysics is not, then, a human method of winning material blessings through spiritual means. It lays down clearly the relationship between thought and experience enunciated throughout the Bible—what we are and what we do determine what we have. But it goes on to show us what we really are and have through our God-derived spiritual qualities. Here is not a spiritual exclusiveness or elitism, but something freely available to everyone.

Justice, generosity, integrity, inspiration, intuition, affection, animation—each of these is evidence in some degree of the divine nature reflected and expressed through man. Each is in itself a blessing. And each helps to counteract the supposed power of inequity, meanness, dishonesty, depression, dullness, inertia.

And what about health? Can that be for everyone too? And is it also linked to thought? Yes, it can be shown to be something quite apart from matter. The sick mistakenly look on substance as material and accept material conditions and laws as crucial to health. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Our blessed Master demonstrated this great truth of healing the sick and raising the dead as God's whole plan, and proved the application of its Principle to human wants. Having faith in drugs and hygienic drills, we lose faith in omnipotence, and give the healing power to matter instead of Spirit. As if Deity would not if He could, or could not if He would, give health to man; when our Father bestows heaven not more willingly than health; for without health there could be no heaven." ^{The People's Idea of God, p. 12;}

Two of the conditions necessary for health were briefly stated by Jesus: "Be not afraid, only believe." ^{Mark 5:36.} God gives fearlessness and absolute faith just as surely as He gives meekness and mercifulness. These qualities belong to all of God's children, but we often have to learn to recognize their significance and power and how to turn from matter to Spirit for healing.

Jesus' healing work was wonderful, but not miraculous in the sense of being incomprehensible to human thought. His works were the natural effect of God's law in action, superseding man-made laws of every kind—whether economic laws of supply and demand, or health laws of heredity, climate, contagion, and age.

Released from matter-based laws and limitations, we become buoyantly responsive to good, intent on developing and sharing what is unlimited instead of bent on dividing what is limited. Health, happiness, and true satisfaction follow. The spiritual way reveals man as God created him—inescapably blessed.