Editorial September 28, 1907 Issue

THE TRUE RICHES

John B. Willis

It has been well said that "it requires a philosophical mood to seek the undeterminate good," and the Christian teaching which has begotten a sense of spiritual realities as far-removed and intangible is in no small degree responsible for the fact that so-called material good, rather than spiritual, commands for the most part the world's attention. The habit of phrasing good fortune in terms of the material is very common, even among professed Christians, though Jesus' whole life and teaching was a protest against the assumption that there is such a thing as material good. When one said to him, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Jesus promptly rebuked the inquirer for separating the thought of good from God, even so far as to attach it to his own personality.

While all agree that that only is good which brings true happiness and peace, the quest for what men call good finds universal expression in the struggle to secure houses and lands. place and power, physical health, a bank account, etc. It is conceded that abiding satisfaction can be found only in the spiritual, yet good is constantly attached to the material in thought, and Christian Scientists are beginning to see the utter fallacy of the position. They are learning to seek "the meaning, the highest rather than the market value, of things." to use an idealist's phrase.

When Jesus taught that we are to realize the satisfaction of human needs, as we seek first "the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," he honored a law of the greatest practical import, namely, that the richest return from any possession is gained only as we think of that possession at its best. There are indeed no riches save the spiritual, there can be no genuine wealth unless it stand for the acquisition and the increased distribution of the coin of "the kingdom." Apart from this, all human possessions are a disability and a snare. They who seek so-called material good for its own sake, not only miss all true satisfaction, but in the struggle they lose, through an entailed depletion of vitality, an acquired sense of penury, or the mere satiety of satisfaction, the very possibility of human enjoyment, and ultimately all are led to echo the cry of the preacher, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." This is the irony or mortal sense.

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"MORE FRUIT."
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