In a newspaper I once saw two contrasting news items. One told of a laborer who unexpectedly came into possession of twenty-five thousand dollars, and celebrated the event with so much liquor that he succumbed. The other item told of a millionaire who lost all his money except twenty-five thousand dollars, and was so depressed that he committed suicide.

The laborer was overwhelmed with exultation at receiving what to the millionaire seemed a pittance not worth living for. The striking difference in their sense of value was in their differing states of thought. Value is entirely mental. What we think of something is the measure of our value of it. Says Moliere, "Things are only worth what one makes them worth."

Gold fishhooks have been found in the old river beds in South America. Gold is no longer used for fishhooks, for a changed sense of value now impels us to dig this metal out of the earth and forthwith put it underground again in well-guarded chambers.

There is no stable value in the material order. The instability of the material mind characterizes its entire sense of value. But there is value which never fluctuates. It is in the one enduring substance, divine Mind, and in the thoughts, qualities, and identities which this Mind constitutes as its manifestation. Divine Mind produces value equal to itself in stability. This value characterizes all that belongs to the true being of man.

Why are the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy the two most sought after religious books in the world? Because they have enduring, stable value. Therein every individual can find the ideas of God and man, which bring health, happiness, and immortality. What could have more value?

Each mortal directs his thought to gain that which to him has value. For many this is money; for others clothes, possessions, place, power, personal relationships, material indulgences. Many mortals mistakenly believe that substance, satisfaction, and pleasure can be found in negative matter, material life, personal desires, and fleeting, material sensation. They are doomed to disappointment. Value is not there, and nothing can put it there.

Value and substance go hand in hand. What is substance to us is of value to us. No one values what to him is unsubstantial. Because there is no substance in matter, there can be no real value in matter. God and His work alone have real, unchanging substance and value. How do we find God, substance, and value? Through thought; through understanding Truth and reality, as Jesus understood them, by aligning our consciousness more and more consistently with the Mind that is Love, accepting as our consciousness only the thoughts which are "God with us." These thoughts of unselfishness, humility, love, patience, justice, and wisdom bring value into our lives.

Value is a living thing. The opposite concepts of value—the material and the spiritual—are indicated in Mrs. Eddy's statement as to what is substance (Science and Health, pp. 349, 350): "In Christian Science, substance is understood to be Spirit, while the opponents of Christian Science believe substance to be matter. They think of matter as something and almost the only thing, and of the things which pertain to Spirit as next to nothing, or as very far removed from daily experience. Christian Science takes exactly the opposite view."

Should we not repudiate mortal mind's false sense of values because they are as worthless and deceptive as mortal mind itself? Can the basic liar, mortal mind, evolve anything more valuable than itself? Yet as mortals we inconsistently believe that the things mortal mind produces have more value than the negative mind that makes them.

We do not live to store up the things which "moth and rust doth corrupt," and which tempt thieves to steal. No profit is found in valuing the things and thoughts that can be destroyed. Said Jesus, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" If a mortal gains all that materiality says has value, but in doing so loses his spiritual sense of Life and selfhood, he gains for a little what is of temporary value, but loses what has real value and permanence. Life's purpose is not to gain material things, but to express spiritual verities and values, which are of the living substance of good, God.

Job saw permanent value to be in the things of Mind only when he said: "But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.... God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.... And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." Here is where value resides—in the wisdom and understanding which loves God supremely, and manifests in daily life the substance of Mind and its stable, imperishable, living riches.

Paul Stark Seeley