Article June 20, 1925 Issue

Saving and Spending

WILLIAM R. RATHVON

Two familiar parables of the Master present lessons, physical and metaphysical, most valuable to the student of Christian Science. Each carries special significance from a spiritual as well as a material viewpoint; and to both may well be applied the words of our Leader in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 288), "Wisdom in human action begins with what is nearest right under the circumstances, and thence achieves the absolute." The story of the talents shows the wisdom of protecting that which we already have, to prevent its being taken away from us. The parable of the ten virgins illustrates the fallacy of inaction and delay. Both teach valuable lessons in saving and spending.

Two important things in human affairs that true economy teaches are to save prudently and to spend wisely. Most people like to spend, and some take pleasure in saving; but unless spending is directed by wisdom and saving is guided by prudence, limitation walks in at one door of the house of endeavor while economy walks out of the other. In Science, economy protects against useless spending, in order that we may do useful spending. It considers the quality of our spending as well as its quantity. It compares our output with our income, and strikes a just balance. Scientific economy is opposed to hoarding and is averse to wasting. It develops a high sense of the usefulness and fitness of things, and is expressed in the admonition of the Master not to cast "your pearls before swine." It gathers up the fragments, even though they be "seven baskets full;" but it never offers fragments where completeness should be tendered.

Related to economy in human affairs is that other member of virtue's family we call thrift. It is thrift that apportions how much to spend and how much to save. It is the hand of thrift that makes one dollar do the work of the two dollars that poor management spends, and of the ten that prodigality wastes. It is thrift that banishes limitation, expels extravagance, and prohibits penury.

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