NEARLY all of us come to Christian Science in the first instance to get something, to get relief from some phase of physical or mental inharmony. We may be, at first, much like the five thousand who once followed Jesus out into the wilderness, and of whom he afterwards said, "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled."
We are not nearly so much interested in hearing about God as we are to know how soon we may expect the loaves and the fishes. Our beloved Master, however, understood this human trait and was tenderly patient with it, just as those to-day who are endeavoring to follow in his footsteps by helping others should remember to be. Although Jesus was in the midst of speaking to them those wonderful words of Truth which would bless them much more than any material thing he might give them, yet he could pause long enough to minister compassionately to that which, to their still unenlightened sense, was the acute need of the moment. Surely there must have been many healed on that occasion of the belief that material supply was the most important thing in life, just as the one to-day who turns to Christian Science to get something will soon find, as he progresses, that the question he must daily ask himself is not, What can I get? but, What can I give?
Speaking absolutely, man cannot get anything, for as God's reflection he already has all. It is obviously impossible to get what one already possesses. One's real work, then, is not to get something which one has not, but to give something out of the abundance which he already has. One's real work is to realize the forever truth of the words of the father in the parable of old, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." So-called mortal mind, however, would reverse all this, just as it would reverse and change all that is really true; and so we, in turn, must refute its lying arguments as fast as they present themselves.
