The demonstration of supply involves more than the overcoming of a belief in lack of money. True provision includes everything that a munificent God bestows upon man; and the recognition and proof of this fact is the demonstration of supply in its truest sense.
In the attempt to banish lack from their experience, too many first concede it to be a fact, and upon this groundwork of erroneous admission endeavor to build a rightful sense of supply. Naturally, the result is a failure. Now, contrariwise, the scientific way is to acknowledge the presence of infinite supply, and upon this governing truth base rightful activity which will destroy the false sense of lack.
Many people are more fearful of the nonentity lack than they are of sickness. Undoubtedly it is a racial belief which can be traced back to frequent hunger and starvation. It is one of the basic lies of mortal mind, and in our complicated living touches many activities of human life. To be destroyed, the fear of lack must be seen as unreal and denied, and the great fact of infinite supply must be recognized, accepted, and demonstrated.
When in the practice of Christian Science a treatment is given for a diseased condition, we do not work to make a sick man well, but to gain the understanding that God's man is perfect now; and this destroys the sickness. If in our efforts to demonstrate supply, health, or harmony in any direction, we admit as real either the lack, the sickness, or the discord, we have in this admission the explanation for any failure to demonstrate the truth. All errors are handled similarly. Their different phases or characteristics call for various applications of divine law; but every error must be proved unreal, its imposition exposed and eliminated.
Instead of accepting lack, we must reject it and prove that it has no reality; that there is no victim, no person or nation to delude. Think of the inconsistency of mortal belief! It is conceded that lack is the absence of reality, of good itself; and yet we think of it as an activity with real existence. Thus in belief we give power to lack. We admit that it is the absence of something, and yet we give to it the very qualities which can belong only to something real— to reality. For instance, lack claims to be the absence of peace, contentment, security, abundance; and yet it seems to insist that it has in some measure the qualities of good, such as activity and existence.
Some wrongly reason that a problem of lack requires a correction different from that of sickness, and that it may be more difficult to overcome. But one error should not offer any more hindrance or obstruction to the operation of divine law than another. Hence lack is as amenable to God's power as is illness. If a person believed that he had any illness and desired to overcome it through Christian Science, should he acknowledge it as real and talk about it; or should he scientifically deny it, pleading God's allness and the perfection of his spiritual selfhood? By a student of Christian Science the effort would be made to deny all apparent material symptoms, appropriate the true and express it in demonstration. Even so must we handle any problem of lack, insisting upon our ability to make our demonstration of supply.
What suffers from lack? Only the false sense that believes the seeming absence of Truth to be real. The real man can never know a void of ever present good. The question may be asked, Whence comes lack, then? Lack comes from no place because of the fact of the ever-presence of good.
We must not be reluctant to analyze what physical sense claims to be real and calls lack. When we fill our consciousness with good, we can lift the veil on this empty sense, or claim to reality, and see only that which is real. Lack, as we have already found, is only the absence, in belief, of the presence of good. The important point is to admit that every individual is, in actual being, the image of God now, at this moment, and so has for his use all the good which God gives His children, the heirs of His abundance. We must know that "all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God." Let us obey the injunction, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise."
The admission that spiritual selfhood is the real son of God, subject to the law of divine inheritance, is a salient feature in the practice of Christian Science. There is no other man than God's man. We must remember that. There are not two of us, the material and the spiritual; neither is there a minglement of the two. Spirit made man spiritual, and thus man remains. "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever." Assuredly, the divine idea, man, can never experience the absence of the heavenly gifts which God has bestowed upon him.
Do we know that as spiritual ideas we are in heaven: or do we entertain the false sense that we are living in matter? If the latter, then we shall have many a belief of limitation or lack to handle, to eliminate from experience. The first sense of limitation arises from the admission that we are out of the kingdom of heaven, out of the focal distance of good. Then follows the experience of lack and the endeavor to regain heaven. We must stand for and prove that which is true about man and the supply which he receives from God.
Some cripple their endeavors by thinking that they can solve all their problems but that of lack. But the false sense of lack is as readily healed by God's law as any other falsity! We must never bestow upon this erroneous sense the weapons which will be turned upon us to our discomfort. Lack has no legitimate claim to reality or power, since it is only a belief that God is not omnipresent. This being so, then ability to give up ignorance about Him depends upon gaining a better understanding of Him and His ever-presence.
Christian Scientists use in many ways the inspirational words written by Mary Baker Eddy (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." If we look deep enough, we shall see that the great human need is to overcome the lack of the understanding of God and of the good He gives. Our Leader writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 186), "Rest assured that He in whom dwelleth all life, health, and holiness, will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory."
Thus it behooves us to become better acquainted with our heavenly Father. Christ Jesus recognized this when he said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." But if we seek first the "things" we shall miss finding God. How urgent it is, then, to know Him who is the source of the infinite supply of that which is always good! As He fills our consciousness with the benign influence of His presence, there admittedly can be with us no absence of good; and it is possible now to demonstrate that God is the infinite Giver of good. Man, the true spiritual self of each of us, can never lack, because man is the reflection of God.
