One Thing Needful

Humanity’s greatest need is to know God. To “draw nigh to God” is not only a Christian duty, it is a paramount need. Job’s counsel, “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace,” sounds the key-note of individual and universal salvation. The knowledge or spiritual understanding of God is the only passport to heaven. Blind belief does not unlock the heavenly portals. Humanity must become acquainted with the Giver of all good if they would be the happy recipients of His grace and bounty. God is not acquainted with strangers. Only those who obey His will are known to Him. Respecting this our revered Leader says, “The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal” (Science and Health, Pref., p. vii). Sin is excluded from His presence as darkness is from the presence of light. How, then, queries mortal sense, is the sinner to be saved, if God is conscious of good only?

Christian Science solves this seeming enigma of the senses by acquainting humanity with God. The true or spiritual understanding of God uncovers and reveals the mythical nature of what the world calls sin or evil. Then it is that the so-called sinner begins to awaken from his dream of supposed life or existence in matter; in other words, he begins to “put off the old man” and to “put on the new man.” This means the purification of that erroneous state of consciousness calling itself a mortal man or woman. It means the extirpation of all thought or belief in sin, but not the loss of any individual man, woman, or child. Mortality is thus put off, and immortality, which alone holds intact every individuality from the least to the greatest, is put on. The erroneous assumption that a single individuality can be absorbed by or lost in the infinite, would deny the eternal unity of God and man. If individuality can be lost, there is no such state as heaven or harmony. Christian Science brings to light man’s true individuality by purifying and elevating humanity’s sense of being. What the world calls personality is a false or temporal consciousness of both good and evil. This is not to be saved, but exchanged for man’s true individuality, which ever reflects the consciousness of good only.

No haughty spirit of ignorant indifference to the spiritual idea will ever usher humanity into the kingdom of heaven. The voice of the Christ speaks just as imperatively in this day and generation: “Without me ye can do nothing.” William Penn in commenting upon human life left this sentiment: “It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves and of the world they have lived in.” And Christian Science adds: But the end is not yet; for this coming into and going out is but the picture of a dream, and the dream is not dissipated, here or hereafter, until humanity turns from self to God through an intelligent recognition of Christ, Truth, as the Saviour of the world.

Humanity’s great mistake is in attempting to know and to do something through physical sense or will-power. Sooner or later through sore travail of mind and body men yield up their belief in a temporal power and turn from physics to metaphysics. Then they begin to acquaint themselves with God. So long as they clung to physical sense or human will-power they were as those “having no hope and without God in the world.” They were struggling against fear, sin, poverty, disease, and limitation, and all the while ignoring or openly resisting the true idea of God. They were toiling in the darkness of human belief and accomplishing nothing worth while. They were laboring early and late “for the meat which perisheth,” for the accumulation of earthly riches, and the selfish gratification of the senses. Truly has it been said that “most people spend so much time making a living that they have no time to live.” The maddening rush after material wealth, fame, and power leaves little time for the contemplation of things spiritual and eternal. Matter is made of first importance in thought, word, and act. The mortal who accumulates earthly possessions is called prosperous and successful, regardless of his attitude toward God, regardless of how little time he has given to spiritual things. Thus the order of Christianity is reversed, and the teaching of the great Wayshower is side-tracked as impractical and void of common sense.

Christian Science takes issue with this popular interpretation of the Master’s teaching, and begins at once to emphasize the practical import of his command, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” The entire fabric of Christian healing, reformation, and regeneration is based upon a right understanding of this spiritual command. The healing of sickness and sin through the power of Christ, Truth, becomes a divinely natural activity in human experience when this fact is realized, for in seeking God first one experiences that spontaneity of thought which reveals the kingdom of heaven on earth, and awakens him to the fact that God is his first and only need.

The first great commandment certainly bears testimony to this truth. To make God of secondary importance is to break this commandment. To acknowledge any other power, source, or activity is to break it. To accumulate material riches at the expense of spiritual growth and development is to break it, and in the sight of God is failure and not success. This is vividly portrayed in Jesus’ parable of the rich man who would pull down his barns and build greater to contain the increase of his fruits and goods, and who reasoned thus within himself, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Human sense points to a thousand and one different things which are deemed absolutely essential to its health and happiness, and then resorts to every conceivable means except the right one to acquire these things, when in reality but one thing is needful and that is to know God, the creator and owner of all things. The promise that “all these things shall be added” as the direct result of seeking first to know God, is one which should receive more serious attention at the hands of all professing Christians. Christian Science is calling loudly upon all mankind to cease laboring “for the meat which perisheth” and to grasp the spiritual import of the Master’s teachings which give precedence to Spirit or Mind. Every holy aspiration, every departure from materiality, is a step toward the kingdom of heaven on earth. This heavenly kingdom will never be reached until it becomes transcendent in the consciousness of humanity.

To those who seek first to surround themselves with the material, the kingdom of spiritual reality seems but a vague uncertainty of the future. To those who seek first to be right with God, to look to Him as the sum and substance of being, the heavenly kingdom is a present reality and man already a permanent resident therein. There is nothing transcendental about this teaching, as results prove. The closer one gets to omnipotent and omnipresent good, the greater his capacity to express good and to eschew evil. A knowledge of evil never yet made a practical or useful man or woman. A knowledge or understanding of good is absolutely essential to the accomplishment of everything that is worthy of human attainment. The highest human accomplishment without God is but a fleeting counterfeit of reality. Hence the conclusion that to work without God is to build on sand. Not one stone shall be left upon another of that structure wherein God has not been recognized as the builder and maker.

The primary object of Christian Science is to open up to humanity the true and only metaphysical approach to the God of infinite Spirit, that they may draw so nigh to God as to make Him of first importance in thought, word, and act. Until this seeking and finding of the true way has actually taken place, human consciousness is dead and buried in trespasses and sins, however loath it may be to make this admission. Every cherished human concept must be spiritualized, before God becomes the Alpha and Omega of all human endeavor.