Editorial June 25, 1938 Issue

"Ye cannot serve God and mammon"

Duncan Sinclair

Christ Jesus uttered a warning to his followers of all time when he said (Matthew 6:24): "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." The Master was drawing attention to the need for wholehearted allegiance to God. With his profound understanding of spiritual truth and his thought consecrated to the doing of the Father's will, he could read the thoughts of mortals as one might read an open book, and there he saw all manner of weakness, including that of double-mindedness. And knowing the futility of double-mindedness, he spoke as he did in order to rouse his followers and others to a right sense of their responsibility to Spirit, God.

Christian Science is continually and emphatically declaring the foolishness of double-mindedness, as did the Master. It is right that it should do so, for the reason that mortals are so readily induced to listen to the arguments of material sense and to be taken in by them, thus losing their spiritual freedom and becoming slaves to error. In spite of the fact that God has been clearly defined to students of Christian Science as infinite Spirit, and that therefore no other substance or power in reality exists, the struggle still appears to go on in their consciousness between Truth and error, the latter arguing for matter and against Spirit. Too often the victory seems to lie with error, the result being that God, Spirit, appears temporarily to be dethroned. And when Spirit is not acknowledged as supreme, loss of spiritual power on the part of the one in whose thought materiality reigns, is certain to follow.

It is an impossibility to serve God while believing in mammon; that is, to love and obey Truth while believing in matter or evil as real. The Christian Scientist knows this, and his effort in consequence always is to give Spirit first place in his thought. This means that he is constantly endeavoring to increase his spirituality, thus dispelling materiality. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 346 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Material beliefs must be expelled to make room for spiritual understanding. We cannot serve both God and mammon at the same time." She adds, "But is not this what frail mortals are trying to do?"

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