Bread has always typified mankind's necessary material food. And in the Bible, bread has also been used to symbolize spiritual sustenance. Jesus said, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you." And he added, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger."John 6:27, 35; Jesus was not, of course, referring to his human selfhood as "the bread of life" but to the Christ, Truth, the spiritual idea of divine Life, which he so perfectly presented.
The Christliness which so distinguished Jesus and gave him the title of Christ was the outcome of his spiritual understanding of God, and he proved his understanding by his works. He put God, his heavenly Father, first in all his thoughts, and so he was truly holy and pure in heart. His life is our example, and we can express true sinless humanhood as he did in the degree that we realize our spiritual identity as the reflection of God. The truth of being which he preached and lived is the bread of Life, which sustained him for forty days in the wilderness. As we take this bread and eat it, we are sustained both bodily and spiritually, for the resulting Christliness which we gain is truly satisfying and nourishing.
That men have spiritual needs far transcending the material was discerned by Moses. In exhorting the Israelites to obey God's commandments, he pointed out that disobedience to God had resulted in famine and hunger and that this had come upon them so "that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."Deut. 8:3; It was this passage that Jesus quoted when he was tempted in the wilderness to believe that life is dependent upon matter.
As we accept the Christ, Truth, we are spiritually refreshed and uplifted, and this is manifested in more harmonious and healthy bodily conditions, for Truth feeds human consciousness with spiritual ideas of strength and loveliness. This demonstration of the coincidence of the human and the divine, which Jesus showed forth, continues until the divine overcomes the human entirely. Assimilating the truth of being, we become more Christlike and reflect more abundantly the divine attributes of God. We are able to follow the example of Christ Jesus more fully in healing the sick and regenerating the sinner. We depend less and less on matter and materiality for satisfaction; for by purifying and spiritualizing thought we find the holiness of Truth, the bread of Life, and are completely satisfied.
According to Christian Science, God, the one divine Mind, is All. Nothing exists or has being except this infinite Mind and its infinite expression, man. It follows that the supposed opposites of divine Mind, that is, matter and materiality, including sin, sickness, disease, and death, are unreal and untrue, because not included in God, Mind, which is infinitely good. Man, the image and likeness of Mind, experiences only what Mind knows. This truth of being, revealed by Christ, comes to human consciousness to destroy every belief of evil and sustains men under every circumstance.
The truth of being leads us step by step to full reliance on Spirit. It may be axiomatic to say that man's fundamental relationship is with God, divine Life. But because man's spiritual relationship with God as divine Principle and idea is governed by spiritual law and is basic and primary, we need to live in strict obedience to the law of God as revealed in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount in order to resist and overcome belief in the reality of evil.
Evil would have us believe it is powerful and real. From all sides, through ever-increasing channels of communication, mankind is being fed with false suggestions of sensuality and immorality and encouraged to believe that satisfaction may be found in physical indulgence. The Christ, the true bread of Life, reveals Spirit as giving real satisfaction. It reveals evil as powerless and unreal and divine Love as having all-power and all-presence. Only in obedience to God's law do men find peace and true substance.
According to the testimony of the material senses, man is a mortal, living precariously in a material universe and subject to material conditions and evil influences. The very reverse is true. Christian Science, the Comforter, is breaking the bread of Life to pacify humanity and assure them that God is all-power and all-presence, that evil is an illusion of the material senses without power or reality.
Mortals and material existence are misconceptions of the human mind; and the Christ, Truth, replaces these false concepts with true ideas. Replacing false beliefs with spiritual facts, we progress humanly towards realizing our real state of perfection. However, whatever seems to be human progress Spiritward is, in reality, the disappearing of false concepts about God and man. For, in Science, man is perfect now. He does not have to become so. Our part is to correct our mistaken views of God and man. Then we are able to partake of and to share the bread of Life, to demonstrate the divine Love that meets every human need.
Of course, what men want is not always what they need. Real human needs are spiritual, including every manifestation of good which reflects God, such as health, harmony, and holiness. Men may want personal power and prestige, position and wealth, but divine Love does not supply the material, fleeting, and perishable. It supplies consciousness with intelligence and spiritual understanding, through which we gain true riches and indestructible substance. Bringing into consciousness the spiritual understanding of Love's ever-presence, we find our needs are rightly met.
While it gives all power to God and teaches radical reliance upon Him at all times, Christian Science does not ignore human suffering but meets it in a practical and loving way. Mrs. Eddy gives an instance of this in Science and Health. She tells of a man who suffered so severely from dyspepsia that he could eat hardly anything. He was completely healed when Christian Science showed him that suffering was a self-imposed belief of mankind, because God never ordained that man should suffer from disease. He learned that being is sustained by Mind and that food has no real power to hurt other than what we give it through a mistaken sense of material being. In this context Mrs. Eddy writes, "He learned also that mortal mind makes a mortal body, whereas Truth regenerates this fleshly mind and feeds thought with the bread of Life."Science and Health, p. 222;
Those whose thought is fed with the bread of Life radiate the qualities of the Christ, expressing health and harmony. Christliness shines through their every action in warmth and vitality. The healing qualities of gentleness and compassion, of strength and intelligence, which are the reflection of Principle and Love, are manifested in the lives of those who accept the truth of being. This Christliness transforms the human with the spiritual, melting away mortals' erroneous beliefs. Exhaling the clean, pure atmosphere of Godlike thought, those whose lives reflect Christ's glory touch and uplift the thoughts of all with whom they come in contact.
The bread which Jesus broke and gave to his disciples at the Last Supper and which he symbolically called his body is, in Science, the truth of being which he embodied. We should not confine partaking of it to special occasions but share in it daily. Mrs. Eddy, in giving her spiritual sense of the Lord s Prayer, explains the line, "Give us this day our daily bread,"Matt, 6:11; as meaning, "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections."Science and Health, p. 17; Daily we need to gain a fuller understanding of God in order that our spiritually famished lives may be fed with the bread of Life.
Through daily prayer and practice we grow in understanding. Christian Scientists are earnestly asked to pray daily for themselves. In requesting this, Mrs. Eddy says: "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,—even that joy which finds one's own in another's good."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127; When we once experience the joy and freedom of spiritual knowing and living, we say with the disciples, "Lord, evermore give us this bread."John 6:34.
