The oft-quoted statement of Mrs. Eddy's "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" Science and Health, p. 494; has undoubtedly blessed, healed, and comforted thousands of individuals. It conveys the benevolent nature of God and sets forth the function of the Christ as God's pure expression. It includes the universality of God's love, the intimacy of His care, and the steadfastness of His relationship to man. We learn in Christian Science that God is perfect Love, unlimited good, and that His creation must manifest the perfect nature of the creator.
But in considering the above quotation the human mind often poses some questions: How does God know what I need? How can I be sure He will answer my need along with all the multitude of other individuals' needs?
It's essential to understand the absolute goodness of God, His allness and perfection. It's essential to understand the perfection of man in God's likeness. These are foundation stones in the Science of being. Divine Love meets the human need not by recognizing the need but by manifesting Love's allness and completeness and man's perfection as God's likeness. God, who is infinite good, could never be conscious of evil in any form. Evil, lack, error, do not exist in the divine Mind. By learning how to obey the commandment to have one God, one Mind, we can utterly relinquish error and thus be healed of the ills of mortality. It's through realizing the allness of God, the perfection of the one Mind, and the unreality of any opposite belief that we can come to experience the goodness of God in the meeting of human needs.
Consciousness is the key to experience. All that we experience in daily life is a mode of human consciousness projected. Any need is a false sense made manifest— a sense of limitation or a lack of something —of health, supply, harmony. When the allness and goodness of God become apparent, when we realize there is just one Mind, this wipes out the belief of need, of any lack of good. God is All-in-all. He is unlimited good. There is no presence apart from Him. There's no space He doesn't fill. He literally is the only presence and power. When consciousness is cleared of the false sense, the belief in evil, then the right idea will become apparent and human consciousness will change wherever change is called for.
Like the incoming tide that fills every nook and cranny of the coastline, divine Love comes to human consciousness, meeting every need by its very presence. The coming of the Christ as personified in Jesus' experience met every type of need.
But the human mind may ask, If God is perfect and knows no lack, no evil or sin, why did He send Jesus to redeem men from limitation and sin?
The fact of God's allness and perfection appears to the human consciousness in the degree of mankind's receptivity. Jesus' appearing was evidence of the receptivity of the human thought of that age. There was an expectancy of a Saviour. Because Jesus manifested the Christ, or the nature of God, we can say that he was "sent." He himself said, "I must work the works of him that sent me." John 9:4; But in this concept of Jesus being sent we must not concede that divine Mind is conscious of error, of lack, or of sin. Mrs. Eddy includes this point in a discussion in Unity of Good entitled "The Deep Things of God." She writes: "The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, His unchangeableness, are not infringed in ethics any more than in music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding of Deity. If God could be conscious of sin, His infinite power would straightway reduce the universe to chaos." Un., p. 13;
Jesus' coming was the fact of God's allness and goodness appearing to humanity in the form that it could understand and perceive. The Christ, as the true idea of God, comes to the flesh of our experience as we open our thought to it, and it comes in a way we can appreciate and perceive. Divine Love meets the human need by revealing that man is already spiritual and perfect, and the sense of need is obsolete. Christ Jesus revealed man's sonship with God, and this in turn lifted human consciousness above the sense of lack of good into the actual presence of good. A friend of mine put it this way: "All Jesus needed to know was that he needed nothing." The Christly sense of man's perfection and wholeness will appear to each of us in the way we can understand and perceive it.
As the sense of lack is obliterated from consciousness, the human need is met. While this operation is essentially mental, the human counterpart is supplied too. As human consciousness adjusts to the fact of good's allness and presence, the objects of sense appear in the way that satisfies the human need. This appears in experience as supply, as health, as harmony and joy. Jesus healed the sick and sinning and supplied the multitude with what was needed in the way of food because he knew that divine Love always meets human needs.
Again, why did God send the Comforter, Christian Science, in this scientific age? We must be convinced that God knows no more of sin now than He ever has or ever will. Divine Love is always expressing itself in the perfection and order of its creation. The Christ, the Comforter, appears to the consciousness ready to receive it and reveals itself in healing and regeneration. It's this appearing that we're witnessing, and it will manifest in the way that meets the human need wherever that need may be.
Christian Scientists are sometimes challenged as to whether or not they are activist enough, that is, active in the material ways that supply material things needed by society. When we properly analyze the situation, we will see that the problem is in consciousness, that it's a state of thought, and that we can't genuinely meet the needs of mankind by a mere distribution of material goods. The right idea of God and of man in God's likeness is needed.
Certainly a Christian and genuinely unselfish attitude is called for in the process of bringing Christian Science to humanity. But it's only as the Christ comes to human consciousness, as the idea of God's allness and goodness dawns upon human thought, that any real progress will be made in meeting human needs. In this way the meeting of the need will come from within, and the healing will be permanent. Nothing else will move mankind toward the goal of completeness and fulfillment.
We can begin to see more clearly that behind Jesus' appearing was the great creative Principle, divine Love, bringing to humanity the Christ, which meets the needs of mankind. The big impetus that prepared human thought for the discovery of Christian Science was divine Love meeting human needs, bringing to the human scene the second appearing of the Christ. Mrs. Eddy's establishment of the Church of Christ, Scientist, is a further step in bringing the Christ to humanity.
The infinite nature of Love that meets every human need is portrayed in this verse from a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal:
Immortal Love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never ebbing sea.Hymnal, No. 142.
