MOST business men will have observed that when business is said to be good and prices are rising, the view-point of those engaged in business undergoes a change. There is a broadening of the outlook, a wider, more expansive thought of worldly matters, and more faith in good expressed. Each one, as the pleasing sense of prosperity grows upon him, finds his interests becoming less self-centered; and growing in assurance, he begins to direct larger issues and sees himself potentially directing even the destinies of nations.
If the tide turns, as it does periodically, the process is reversed, and the same one is seen to be retreating, apparently from a fear of oncoming disaster. Simultaneously his view-point becomes restricted, his motives and actions narrowed even to meanness, until at last, in fear and hesitancy, shrinking from impending evil, thought seems to rest solely on self, and to find utterance in very pessimistic fashion. That same man of affairs, he who has looked out upon the world expanding in the sunshine of its possibilities, now is blindfolded by fear and gagged by doubt. What has happened to bring about this change? Is it true that the supply which before seemed to flow so freely is going to dry up altogether, causing ruin and distress to thousands, or is it merely a change of thought which has taken place with regard to it? Christian Science deals with the problem of such unstable thinking fairly and squarely, as it does with all other human problems, on the basis of the Master's teaching.
Quite clearly Jesus saw right through the fallacy of the human sense of supply, when he said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom." It was the Master's work to disengage human thought from its material encumbrances, to which he traced all the ills of human experience. How could one whose happiness depended upon the increase or loss of riches know aught of man's spiritual heritage, for riches are determined by commodities always limited as to quantity and depending on the vagaries of human belief for value. "Remove far from me vanity and lies," said the sage; "give me neither poverty nor riches."
