Article October 10, 1908 Issue

"BY MENTAL, NOT MATERIAL PROCESSES."

CARL HORTON PIERCE.

Perhaps no other problem has a tendency to perplex the business man to-day as does the money problem,—the question of daily bread. It matters not whether a man has thousands upon thousands of capital in the bank, the conditions are such in the business world that he is being daily driven from dependence upon his capital in the bank to the capital which is in heaven,—the one capital, the understanding of divine Love. A valuable testimony given in the Sentinel some years ago, stated that it took three hundred blows of an axe to remove an unsightly stump of a tree, that the otherwise beautiful landscape might be preserved. This article pointed out that the first and the second and every other blow of the axe, even to the last, was as necessary as any other one blow, and that all were directed to the one end,—the removal of the stump. This testimony helped a struggling Scientist to overcome a compound rupture, through this continual blow upon blow at the error which would try to hold him in bondage to fear and inharmony; and it is again offered, in these seemingly strenuous financial days, to help every one who is struggling to demonstrate that the only capital is the truth, and that the call to every one in the Field is to "trust in Truth, and have no other trusts" (Sentinel, July 4, 1903).

In the case of the business man, struggling with the fear of limitation, there needs to be more of the quickening, active work done. With his business there is apt to be the almost hopeless hope that conditions will right themselves. They cannot right themselves, but God will right them through the man who thinks righteous thoughts. It is not thinking rightly to entertain fears of the poorhouse, or of the pawnshop. yet that is what one is very apt to fall into, if he listens to the arguments of discouragement which are more and more rife as mortal mind finds its asserted laws failing, and divine Mind is calling to the Scientist to rise higher into the understanding that there is only one power; that "evil is not power" (Science and Health, p. 192); that the silver and gold belong to God, "and the cattle on a thousand hills." Are you discouraged: then "count your many blessings, see what God has done." Are you ill at ease, and seemingly poverty-stricken: remember that it is better to be ill at ease, with your bark launched on the troubled waters of truth,—as our Leader has pointed out (Science and Health, p. 254),—than to rest on beds of ease, with no experience in the demonstration of the Love that meets every human need.

Even faith the size of a grain of mustard-seed removes mountains of doubt and dense fear. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." This promise is only for him that "dwelleth," not for the man who prays one minute and doubts the next. The martyr Sanctus allowed no thought of fear to enter his mind, as they burned him with hot plates, but said, "I am a Christian;" and the martyr of this age may take his stand as firmly, while error defeats itself and business methods are undergoing the purging of Truth. Armed with the truth, we press onward, viewing the overturning of the money tables, and fearing not the separating of the tares from the wheat. To-day, as of yore, aspiring thoughts in the temple are or have been bartered for gain, but Truth's mighty angel is rapidly whipping the usurers from their vaunted positions, and the world is beginning to know "the only wise God," and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. Time was, perhaps, when we prayed to be delivered from this battle with the demons within ourselves, and to flee as a bird to our mountain, apart from this struggle with false thoughts and money demonstrations, but it is like the spiritual growth of the one who first prayed to be healed for the healing's sake, but later was content to suffer until he should have been completely reformed in thought; so with the business man, there comes the desire even to have the struggle continue until every thought shall have come into subjection to Christ, Truth, and the desire for gain shall have given way to the desire for the heavenly riches which moth and rust do not corrupt.

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