Mankind's only true resource is a correct understanding of God and of His spiritual idea, the Christ. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 275): "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle." When men have accepted the truth of the allness of God, Spirit, and admitted the consequent nothingness of materiality or evil, as taught in Christian Science, they are in possession of an understanding of the ever-presence and immediate availability of the ideas of divine Mind; and this understanding is able to offset any claim of lack, insufficiency, or inharmony. In any given circumstance all that is necessary for us to do, to free ourselves from a sense of lack or limitation, is to utilize our present spiritual resources, through our understanding of Truth.
Man is the expression of God, and therefore there must be present in that expression or manifestation of the All-in-all the spiritual idea which supplies each need. Our work, then, is the scientific affirmation of the ever-presence of good, and the denial of any opposing claim of mortal mind to presence or power. We can find ourselves in no situation in which we are apart from God's goodness and love, although the temptation of animal magnetism is to cause us to accept the reverse of this scientific fact of being, to affirm the absence of good, supply, substance, and the presence and substantiality of nothingness.
When the woman replied to Elisha's question, "What hast thou in the house?" that she had nothing of value there, saying, "Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil," he apparently instantly recognized that her urgent need was to be awakened to the ever-presence of good. The fact was that immediately present and available was the spiritual idea which, when admitted into her consciousness, instantly freed her from the mesmerism of the limiting claims of personal responsibility, resistance, suspicion, and fear. The qualities of humility, obedience, and trust which she expressed made her receptive to this truth. Thus mentally freed, as the result of the spiritual understanding of Elisha, her thought became illumined, and she was able to prove immediately that her available supply, which before had been regarded as too insignificant to be considered, was entirely adequate to meet every demand made upon her, when properly utilized.
