The Bible tells us that every true gift and every perfect gift is from God. The answer to the question: What is considered a true and perfect gift? will vary in accordance with the seeming human need. The sick man will cry out for health, but, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, may think he cannot get it because "while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." Yet health is universal and infinite. It is an eternal fact; its contrary, ill-health, no health or disease, is therefore unreal, untrue. Health is an attribute, a gift from God; it belongs to all alike and can be realized through the understanding of God as taught by Christ Jesus.
Some cry out in want and poverty and look sadly or enviously at what they consider more fortunate fellow men. Yet God gives impartially and with Him there is no limitation, no need; for demand and supply are simultaneous. What is it the seemingly needy one asks? Material possessions? They will not satisfy. The understanding of true substance alone can still the cravings of the human heart and enrich experience. When men look away from material things to the substance of Spirit, through the recognition that man, as God's idea, is now at the standpoint of true wealth,—command over material senses.—they cease to want material possessions merely for the sake of possession and the satisfaction of the senses. The fulfillment of this Bible promise will then be their experience: "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shall thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." Trustful obedience will guide the desires and, because man is the son of God, the seekers will be enabled to want only what God wants. Because supply is as infinite as God a man's every need is met before he is even conscious of it.
As for him who desires the spiritual riches but loves his earthly possession.—the very hunger and thirst in his heart will teach him that his false concepts of wealth and possession are not true riches, that on the contrary, as the wise man has said, "All is vanity." Then when the hunger and thirst for righteousness overbalance the love for materiality, he will reach out for the gift of God, the understanding that man is the reflection of God to whom belong all things. In their ignorance of the nature of God and in the arrogance of human pride, men have accepted a suppositional opposite of the divine Mind. The Bible speaks of this as the carnal mind. This mind claims to know what God, the divine Mind, does not know, namely good and evil. Humanity's acceptance of this mortal or carnal mind has been the cause of all chaos and inharmony. It is the producer of Babel, where men cannot understand each other because each one speaks a different language. The conflicting opinions which have arisen from the belief of minds many have caused envy and strife. Trusting to their own sense of intelligence, their beliefs of human rights and personal ability, some have acquired, often at the expense of others, what constitutes their concept of possession, knowledge, and success. On the other hand there are those who, also accepting this material sense of things, believed themselves, through "lack of opportunity." "lack of intelligence." and other erroneous beliefs of limitation, doomed to be unfortunate and unsuccessful. But when they learn that the understanding of God's allness is the only and unfailing basis for success, and true success is inherent in the divine Mind, they begin to move as God moves, and to obey the Golden Rule. Build on so-called human intelligence is building on sand, and is fraught with all the liabilities the human mind has invented for its emanations. But turning to divine Mind one will change his course and participate in the joy of seeing divine intelligence reflected through man. The reflection of this intelligence will result in success which will bless not only himself but all, since it is the conscious activity of the healing presence of divine Mind.
