To the sufferer turning as a last resort to Christian Science for help, Christian Science may mean simply another healing method to be tried. To the student of Christian Science, convinced of its truth and trying to advance in knowledge and practice, it means the revelation of divine law. To him Christian Science is not in the nature of a drug, to be used only in time of distress; it is the knowledge of God to be relied on every moment of existence. Everything that he thinks and does is to be ordered by God. His business, as well as his body, is to be subject to divine government.
In considering whether one has the right to use his understanding of Christian Science for the improvement of his business it is well to be clear about the consistency of being at the same time a Christian Scientist and a business man. Business in itself is a normal, right activity, and a right thing to be engaged in. If, then, a Christian Scientist is condemning himself because he is in business, if he is arguing that his work is not spiritual, if he labels some forms of work holy and other worldly, if he secretly feels that no work is worthy except that of the Christian Science practitioner, he is misapprehending the real meaning of Christian Science, which teaches that it is not what one does that makes his work hallowed but what one thinks while he does it. There is as great need for the practice of Christian Science in business as there is in the work of healing the sick. Business, in order to be corrected, purified, and conducted on a Christian basis, surely calls for pure, spiritual, wise, and loving thought. The Christian Scientist who is a business man can be quietly at peace with himself in regard to his occupation, and he can and should turn to God for guidance as humbly and confidently and completely as the Christian Science practitioner.
To be in business means to be working for Principle. "I might be able to heal my own false beliefs about business," a Christian Scientist may say, "but there are others connected with me. They are not Christian Scientists, so what good will my thinking do?" The only thing one can ever do, or needs to do is to destroy error for himself, and if that is done it helps all with whom he comes in contact. For example, Jesus, in the first temptation in the wilderness, destroyed for himself the belief that life must be sustained by matter. Having done this, he could later perform the miracle of feeding the five thousand. He did not argue that he was spiritually minded and that the five thousand were not. He had so thoroughly destroyed his belief in materiality that he was enabled to demonstrate spiritual law in an unlimited degree for others. Or, to take an example we have all seen: Though there be but one student of Christian Science in a household, who does his own right thinking, the presence of this true thinking animates the general situation. Mentally separating non-Scientists from the divine good that flows impartially to all is not exercising that compassionate quality of thinking so needed by mankind. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 206 of Science and I Health. "In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes. —Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply."
