Any system of human thought and action claiming to be religion must be applicable to every phase of human living in order to make good its claim. We have a right to expect this from religion, and we may reasonably reject as unsatisfactory any asserted revelation of Truth which does not fulfil these conditions. Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost, to declare a full salvation. Religion may be defined as the formulated declaration of the Saviour, and as such it must not disregard any condition which needs a Saviour, else it fails to fulfil the mission of the Messiah.
The various subdivisions of the Christian religion have seemingly lost sight of the great need of humanity,—a full salvation from every form of error. We have only to review the life of Jesus, however, to recognize how thoroughly he understood his mission and how fully he accomplished what he came to do. If he taught anything at all, he taught that discord is abnormal and unrighteous, and he did not confine his teaching to the correction of moral abnormity, but included every irregularity which deprives man of his lawful dominion.
While the great teacher plainly deprecated the merely commercial spirit, he showed, by demonstration, that the Christ saves from every form of limitation and provides an abundance of all that is needful. He not only destroyed sinful thoughts and diseased conditions of body, but when he was confronted by the needs of the five thousand, he proved that the Christ—spiritual understanding—is capable of providing for even this human need, and when, as subjects of a civil government, his followers were obliged to pay a tax, he proved that the affluence of a limitless Creator was equal to this emergency. In short, Jesus taught that financial discord, or lack, was a phase of error which could and must be corrected by the true understanding of man's complete endowment. He knew that this evil one, or one evil, accused men of a lack of the very necessities of everyday life, and he knew as well that these accusations were all false.
