Editorial June 20, 1925 Issue

"Wisdom, economy, and brotherly love"

Albert F. Gilmore

The student of Christian Science finds in the Church Manual many wise words to guide him in the demonstration of right living. These words, written out of the profound spiritual understanding with which Mrs. Eddy was so richly endowed, may be carefully pondered with great profit. A paragraph on page 77 of the Manual, of deep significance to every disciple of Christ, states, "God requires wisdom, economy, and brotherly love to characterize all the proceedings of the members of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist." Rarely, if ever, has so comprehensive a statement been made in so few words. It is both brief and sententious, comparable in these particulars with the sayings of the Founder of Christianity. It has the dignity and power of the stately passages found in the Psalms and in the words of the prophets.

The Christian Scientist, like Solomon, learns the great value of wisdom, not the wisdom which is worldly, but the wisdom which is spiritual understanding, knowledge of God and His universe. This wisdom can have no other basis than the enduring foundation of Spirit, the source of all that is. It is the emanation of the divine intelligence which knows all, is over all, and embraces all. Worldly wisdom, resulting from a material view of existence and creation, could scarcely supply adequate understanding of reality, the facts of being, the truth about God and man. How perfectly has our Leader characterized spiritual truth in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 275): "No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows." True wisdom, then, is an attribute of divine intelligence, which man reflects. Mortals gain this wisdom in proportion to their grasp of spiritual truth. Since it belongs to the real man as God's reflection, it is universal, and all may become its beneficiaries.

Economy is a method of conduct from the exercise of which likewise much profit ensues. How happily does our Leader associate economy with wisdom! She also speaks of human and divine economy: the one the wise management of human affairs; the other characterizing God's plan for His universe, which is governed with perfect order and without loss. Fuller understanding of this word is had from the study of its sources, the Greek words meaning "house" and "to manage." Primarily, then, economy pertains to the management of a household; and surely the implication is that unless the management were wise, that is, prudent, it would fail of its purpose. Wise management precludes the thought of waste or extravagance. What is done wisely is done prudently, since expenditure which is wasteful is not economy.

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