The petition, "Give us this day our daily bread" is breathed fervently the world over by countless thousands who perhaps unconsciously give material meaning only to the uttered words. The task of the Christian Scientist is to realize the spiritual or real meaning of the word "bread." Turning to the Scriptures he can find innumerable allusions to what bread really is. In the sixth chapter of John we read, "And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."
So, starting on this basis, replacing, as the study of Christian Science teaches, the counterfeit by the real, we shall reverse our conception about bread and think of it in spiritual terms as the truth about life that we daily crave, instead of the material bread. As God is all there is and God is infinite Life, Truth, Love, so Truth is all there is, and man in reality has right now all the truth there is, all the bread there really is. We do not have to beg or petition for this bread, this truth of life, because Jesus tells us, "Therefore take no thought, saying. What shall we eat? . . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Again, in the petition, "Give us this day." we know that the true to-day is all man has, and to-day man has all there is. In the sixth chapter of Matthew we also read: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
So, when mortal mind, which is nothing but the supposititious opposite of all there is, would attempt to create a thought of want and lack by spreading broadcast the belief that available material means will not be able to meet the increased cost of material bread, a Christian Scientist has but to realize anew what his daily bread is and where his supply is. He can, if tempted to be cast down or depressed by seeming world conditions of want and woe, read again the story of the time when Jesus and Peter were sojourning in Capernaum and it came time for the payment of the tribute money. Jesus, then as always the great Exemplar, strove in no way to evade the law of the land in which he happened to be. Realizing his oneness with God, the only source and supply, he unhesitatingly and with directness said to Peter, "Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up: and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee." This was no miracle, no unnatural wonder, but was a supremely natural event, the result of using the divine Principle of metaphysics; and its use brought the correct result, just as the application of the rule of mathematics to a mathematical problem will bring the right answer.
