Article November 3, 1917 Issue

Minding Our Business

JOSEPH B. BAKER

Admittedly the usefully active life is the only life worth living, and happy is the one who has deliberately gone into a business in which the applying, according to his ability, of the one or the two or the five talents received from his Lord brings forth logical returns. In such a life there is a constant sense of progress, with every moment fully occupied,—satisfaction indeed! The one business that measures up to this standard is the Father's, and the nature of this business and the rule for minding it are specified by Mrs. Eddy with characteristic clearness on page 450 of Science and Health: "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good."

The warfare between Spirit and the flesh is in this statement tersely summarized for all who are honestly seeking for the truth, so that no one who has undertaken to serve in this cause need be in doubt as to just what is to be done and the one way of doing it. Man's dominion now, as in the time of Christ Jesus, is entered upon by each individual in proportion as he acknowledges God practically, through recognition of and obedience to His demands; in other words, through the understanding gained by man in responding to the infinite wisdom of the Father. Does not this indicate the world's greatest need to-day to be spiritually scientific thinking?

In Proverbs we read, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." The vitalizing element in the teaching of Christ Jesus is the demonstration that the whole of man is found in his manifestation of Mind. Yet do we not see on every hand the very reverse of this,—stubborn rejection of Truth, impish perverseness, with their consequences, friction, discord, and downright destruction as the rule, or rather the misrule, of human existence? Everywhere we observe the fruitlessness of work performed through ill-considered effort or from a merely mechanical or sensuous impulse. Perhaps it is a business conference that comes to naught, or a family or social relationship that goes awry, or a personal sense of poverty or disease that seems to increase. The so-called progress of modern invention, and the introduction of elaborate business systems having a physical or a so-called psychological basis, have not diminished the pitiful sum total of human suffering. In the industrial world wonders are wrought by efficiency engineers, laboring to eliminate extra time-consuming manual movements of factory workers or to shorten manufacturing processes in other ways. But have these specialized reforms, based on so-called natural law, healed the general condition and intercourse of mankind? On the contrary, do we not have continually forced upon our attention the waste that goes on in every department of life, due to the absence of real or God-responsive thought?

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