The proverb which describes the human struggle against poverty and want as an effort to "keep the wolf from the door" hints a deeper metaphysical truth than may be commonly supposed. Poverty of any form, whether it be want of means, of health, or of happiness, like all material phenomena, is the manifestation of some erroneous state of mortal thought which is, as Christian Science shows, mentally produced. Speaking from the spiritual viewpoint, infinite, divine Principle environs man as the child of God with the affluence and contentment of pure Mind. The rapacious "evening wolves," of the prophet's phrase, which prey upon human consciousness to steal away the realization of this spiritual fact, are simply the unreal beliefs of the mortal mind preying upon itself, and externalizing its poverty in what may seem to the human mind a lack of material things, or in the obverse penury which often attends the unglorified possession of many material things.
The belief that existence is physical instead of metaphysical, leads naturally to the indulgence of material self and passions, and terminates many times in the sequent belief that any means to the end of selfish gratification, even if it be extortionate, cunning, or treacherous, is legitimate. The material phenomenon of superabundance does not necessarily indicate that a man has driven the wolf from his door. It may mean quite the reverse,—that the wolf has temporarily succeeded in turning away the spiritual idea. Impoverishment can mean nothing but an absence of the spiritual understanding of God; and this want as surely manifests itself in the devotion to matter which succeeds in accumulating matter as it does in the devotion to matter which fears that it cannot be accumulated.
Among the twelve tribes of Israel, which may be taken to symbolize the material beliefs common to all mortals, Benjamin stands for the warlike disposition which takes pleasure in conquest. Jacob, his father, said of him, "Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil." The simile points, obviously, to certain wolflike mental states of mortals rather than to physical manifestations. The carnal mind itself, out of which arise selfish, greedy, bitter, proud, envious, and cruel beliefs, is the wolf which must be proved unreal, and its effects thus effectually driven from experience. In the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 582), Mrs. Eddy analyzes the condition of mortal mind characterized by Jacob as the wolf, where she writes: "Benjamin (Jacob's son). A physical belief as to life, substance, and mind; human knowledge, or so-called mortal mind, devoted to matter; pride; envy; fame; illusion; a false belief; error masquerading as the possessor of life, strength, animation, and power to act."
