During times of seemingly great stress and disturbance in human affairs, whether they are personal, local, national, or international in their nature, it is the duty of every Christian Scientist to examine thought with a view to determining what misconceptions or prejudices may be contributing to the difficulty. An important question to be answered is. What concepts of substance are influencing human thought and action? A knowledge of history makes it plain that through the ages the belief in lack of substance and supply has been an important factor in fomenting wars and writing many unhappy and unnecessary pages of history.
Christian Science reveals that the only correct concept of substance and supply must be found in our understanding of God. Since God, Spirit, is the only substance, supply must be spiritual, completely free from the limitations of a supposititious material sense. Substance is an essential condition of reality; therefore divine substance must express the nature of God's being, for it is an essential condition of Truth. Truth is substantial, real; error is unsubstantial, unreal. There is no outside to the allness of Spirit, God, and therefore no possibility of the existence of matter as a reality. Since God's being is one and infinite, all being is spiritual—forever unfolding and expressing itself. There is no place in the whole of being for the existence of matter.
Supply, based upon a concept of matter as substance, is subject to beliefs of great limitation. The belief is that people in many parts of the world do not have enough to eat—are actually going hungry—and that in times of drought or similar disaster still others must starve. The Malthusian theory, that population tends to increase at a more rapid rate than food supply, is accepted by many and has even been advanced by some as an argument for the necessity of wars. The belief in not enough food leads to a belief in not enough land, and nations begin to covet the possessions of their neighbors. This leads to wars, killing, stealing, and so on. Thus, in addition to breaking at the very outset the First Commandment, the belief that matter, instead of infinite Spirit, is substance leads directly and inevitably to the breaking of all the Commandments.
