Christian Scientists are not engaged in building up a material sense of existence, nor in governing their affairs according to material standards, but rather are they concerned in learning the spiritual meaning of all that pertains to their well-being. In this spiritualization of thought is naturally involved the outgrowing or abandoning of their former material views, and the transfer of their affections from the things of material sense to the things of Spirit. Much of what had formerly been considered as of prime importance, and worthy of human ambition and attainment, is giving place to a clearer apprehension of the spiritual realities of existence, and of what constitutes the true substance of happiness and enrichment. Neither earthly experience nor the teachings of Christ Jesus warrant the belief that the acquisition of worldly wealth is essential to prosperity, or that it ministers, in any true sense, to human need. Christian Scientists do not ignore or despise the utility of money as a medium of exchange, or as representing the quid pro quo of mental or manual labor, but they are awakening, however slowly, to the fact that the substance of all that mortals hope for is in spiritual and not material consciousness; therefore to become spiritually wealthy, to lay up "treasures in heaven." should be their chief care.

The "love of money" is defined in Scripture as the "root" from which springs all evil, a view which human experience corroborates and which should warn mankind against its mesmeric spell. The inordinate desire for gain becomes mere idolatry when one forgets that "the earth is the Lord's" and that good can be derived from God only. In the belief of mortals money is endowed with almost supreme power; but it is admitted that it can work evil as well as good, that it often works ruin and havoc upon one while enriching another; it cannot, therefore, proceed from the divine nature or government. In their passion for its possession many have been willing to barter the fairest things in their keeping,—their purity, justice, honesty, self-respect, brotherly love. If one lives for mere money-getting, the heartless hoarding of unearned millions through the deprivation of many will stand only for poverty, so far as those things are concerned which are worthiest in the sight of God, and whose accumulation brings their possessor nearer and nearer to the divine image.

The modern tendency towards large monopolies, the attempt to bring the world's supplies under the control of a few, with its manifest injustice and oppression, is the natural fruit of human selfishness, nourished by the belief in the sovereignty of wealth and grown abnormally large through opportunity and indulgence. The possessors of large fortunes may derive a transient sense of pleasure in the ability they confer to gratify material desires, or from the adulation of a fickle money-worshiping world, but when they are surfeited of all that money can provide, with what shall they appease the unstilled hunger of the heart? Money gives no abiding satisfaction to the millionaire who revels in it, to the thief who steals it, or to the toiler who sweats for it. If houses and lands, stocks and bonds, fine raiment and jewels are men's chief needs, then indeed is the millionaire rich and the toiler poor; but if goodness and love, kindness, charity, and truth are the necessities of man's being, then the toiler and the millionaire might change place and neither be the richer nor the poorer. The belief that riches consist of material things has made criminals of men, while the knowledge that all that makes life worth living is gained only through Christlikeness and spirituality, makes men benefactors of their kind, whose gains of goodness enrich the world and impoverish none.

The only value attaching to wealth is the good it may enable its possessor to do, the enlarged freedom it may confer to give his time more unreservedly to God and the race. Its possession is not an evil if it has been honestly acquired, if it does not encourage selfish sentiments and motives, nor alienate trust in God; but whatever disturbs the right relationship between mankind and God is evil, either of itself or in the sense entertained of it. If the fear of want is held in abeyance only because of what one may have in the bank, or the prospects of retaining one's position, it may be a blessing to lose these if thereby we gain the consciousness of the Father's care. Divine Love is no nearer the man with a million to his credit, than to the man who has only what he earns from day to day. In their sense of want or of abundance mankind must learn that God, Spirit, is All in all to man, a truth that, when understood, heals the false sense of poverty, the feverish greed of gold, and all the disease and dementia of a material sense of being.

Mortals do not need money as much as they need love and purity and goodness,—conditions without which they cannot gain the consciousness of happiness or of immortality. The largest fortune on earth cannot impart to its possessor one grain of true wisdom, nor give him access to the knowledge of Truth. On the contrary, the tendency of material wealth, apart from Christian influence, is away from spirituality and towards sensualism and worldly-mindedness. When one stands face to face with the great problem of being, and realizes the helplessness and poverty of wealth in the presence of sorrow and pain and death, the hollowness of material pleasure, and the frailty and uncertainty of the human sense of existence, he must admit that what enriches and redeems human nature must be outside of materiality. Sooner or later the lesson must be learned that the substantial success of living is not the accumulation of gold and silver and lands, but of those spiritual qualities which constitute the ideal man in God's likeness. All merely material possessions at last drop from one's grasp,—his gathered millions and his broad acres pass to others, and he stands at the close of his earth career empty handed, save for what he has gained of those things which God prizes in man, and without which mortals are "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."

Christian Science abundantly demonstrates the ability of infinite Spirit to care for all the needs of man, although the human sense of both need and supply may often seem material. Man as the son of God has access to "all that the Father hath," a spiritual abundance from which each individual is supplied without impoverishing the other. But let no one indulge in the fancy that because Christian Science enables him to overcome a sense of poverty, that it will "demonstrate" material possessions by the same rule. Christian Science demonstrates the reality and substance of Spirit, divine Mind, but does not accept or maintain a material sense of things. The first and last need of mankind is to know what God is, and this need the understanding of Christian Science alone supplies. The lack of necessities in one's present environment is a discordant state, resulting from a false material sense of being, and as this sense yields to the apprehension of spiritual truth, the immediate causes of poverty disappear, whether disease or lack of work. A sense of material wealth and material poverty merely represents the extremes of human belief, which fails to apprehend man's spiritual nature and existence. God rewards our faithfulness to the Christ-ideal with more goodness and love. He also gives an abundance of the things needed for our comfort and happiness, when we recognize the divine source of all supply. It was the knowledge of what God, Spirit, is that enabled Jesus to feed the thousands, despite the inadequacy of the material sense of supply; and it will be through gaining the same knowledge that we shall have our needs cared for, and not through belief in the mere gaining of money or other forms of matter.

The Christian Scientist is not required to lose his earthly possessions any more than his sense of health, but he does need the spiritual sense of both harmony and substance to preserve these from the spoiler, material sense. God requires the sacrifice only of that which usurps His place in our affections and desires. As we gain the understanding of the Science of being, Christian Science, we shall preserve whatever is worthy in our present experience, and will become enriched in those things which God hath laid up for those who love Him, and which endure for time and eternity.