"Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." Many times since Christ Jesus uttered these words have they brought a measure of rest and comfort to humanity in time of need, as have also the following words written centuries later by Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 494): "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." Frequently, Christian Scientists have found these two statements of great practical value in the overcoming of some human need. At the same time, most of us are conscious of a desire for a deeper and fuller appreciation of the truth stated in these quotations. Does there not often seem, to human sense, to be a gap between that spiritual good which we are assured belongs to God and the supply requisite to meet our human need?
Between the ideas of God, Spirit, and the things of material sense there is an unbridgeable gulf, since the former are real and the latter are unreal. This fact, however, offers no justification for the belief that our temporary human needs cannot be met from the divine source; the very reverse is true. Between material unreality and spiritual reality lies the whole gamut of human progress, expressed in what is known in Christian Science as demonstration, whereby the former disappears from our consciousness and the latter is seen in its true status.
A need not met is the result of a finite material sense of things which is altogether illusive. The necessity is to see that "metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul" (Science and Health, p. 269). This statement calls, in the first place, for a recognition of the essentially mental nature of human experience. The next step required is to see that divine Mind is the Principle of all true being, and that realities exist as spiritual ideas, not as objects of material sense. As we discern this spiritual aspect of the situation, we begin to comprehend the demonstrable nature of another pertinent statement by our Leader (ibid., p. 442), "Christ, Truth, gives mortals temporary food and clothing until the material, transformed with the ideal, disappears, and man is clothed and fed spiritually." In this sentence the word "transformed" calls for attention, since it indicates that the process is not one of destruction, leaving an unbridged gap, but a progressive mental process of transformation. Paul uses the word in the same way when in his epistle to the Romans he says, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."
