Down through the years mortals have manifested many wants and many needs. They have striven for the gratification of their desires, usually through material means— sometimes through blind reaching out for the spiritual. Rarely have they clearly differentiated between that which is merely desired and that which is really needed. When Mary Baker Eddy wrote in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need," she pointed to the only way through which all human needs can be met.
What men want is not always what they need. The great need is for health, harmony, substance, joy, spiritual understanding—for every manifestation of good which reflects God. These needs are spiritual, and divine Love supplies them in abundant measure through the understanding and practice of Christian Science. Men sometimes want personal prestige, position, power, money, and that which can be bought with money; but divine Love does not supply the material, perishable, and fleeting, which possess neither reality nor eternality.
Our real need is not for material things, but for spiritual understanding; for it is through this understanding that we gain true riches, the indestructible substance which cannot be taken from us. Christian Science teaches us how to bring into our consciousness the true knowledge of God and man, the spiritual understanding of divine Love's ever-presence, through which alone human needs are rightly met.
