Article November 18, 1911 Issue

THE BUSINESS MAN AND PRAYER

CARL HORTON PIERCE.

What business man has not prayed? And what business man has not felt that at times his prayers were unanswered because they fell short of the fruition which to his sense ought to have come to him by reason of earnest labor and honest endeavor? Certainly this has been the lot of many, and at such times, when honest hope and good motive warrant success, the business man may ask himself, "What is the matter with my prayer?" Concurrent with this question, the student of the times sees this phenomenon, that whereas in the human stress and strife of business there seems to be a concentration of responsibility and money control, on the Godward side there is the making toward universality, unity of men and nations, brotherly kindness, and, withal, a divine economy. These two tendencies, essentially the antipodes of each other, seem to be at war; but in reality they are not, because one is the real and the other the non-lasting or unreal condition.

Christian Science enters the arena to explain, as no other system of Christianly economic study has ever done, how it is that a man can be a Christian and yet stay in the business whirl; how a man can love his neighbor as himself and yet have a crust to himself; how a man can pray aright and effectively. As the correct view of astronomy cannot be gained unless the student takes an imaginary position outside of the mundane sphere, so the business man is aided in his vision of his eventuality the moment he assumes a focal point outside the material sense of gain and loss. Christ Jesus, our Exemplar, with unerring exactness and simplicity said that men ask amiss when they ask for things that they may consume them upon their material desires.

"But," the business man may say, "I do not ask for things that I may be selfish with them. I ask in order that I may give bread and butter to my family." How true it is that many men think they only ask for the necessities; but given these, they ask for more. Given a finger, they ask an arm. And he is a good Christian Scientist indeed who, given an overwhelming business success, can yet maintain such modesty and simplicity of living that the simplest needs only are catered to, while all of the residue is given to the promotion of God's cause on earth. Not so the ordinary man! Give him abundance over and above his immediate wants, and the human mind thinks of a hundred other wants. At the moment when his need was great, he thought he desired only the necessities; now, with those needs met, he is lusting after "purple and fine linen."

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