HUMANITY is today deeply perplexed through the sudden and unexpected disappearance of what was called prosperity. There is hardly a man or a woman in the civilized world who is not feeling the effects of the much advertised depression, in reduction of income, in lessened or dislocated business, in unremunerative prices, or in unemployment; and nations feel it as much as individuals. Has Christian Science something to tell us about this collective condition, or does it deal only with the individual's problems as they are affected by sin, sickness, personal loss of supply, or death? It most certainly has, for it is the Science which, in proportion as it is understood and applied, solves scientifically and without possibility of failure every human problem.
But as with sickness, Christian Science approaches world problems from a point of view radically different from that of the ordinary economist, business man, or politician. It does not concern itself primarily with the material evidences of discord or maladjustment, for these it knows are merely the effects of wrong thinking, of compliance with the false arguments and thinking of the carnal mind, which, as Paul says, is "enmity against God." It looks first to God, the divine Principle of man and the universe, to discover where humanity has gone astray. For just as the mathematician, confronted with chaotic accounts, knows that the science of mathematics will bring perfect order out of apparent chaos, so the Christian Scientist, confronted with economic or political chaos, knows that the Science of being taught by Jesus, put into practice, must infallibly establish the kingdom of God on earth, with men, "rejoicing in the affluence of our God," as Mrs. Eddy says on page 140 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
What, then, from the standpoint of Christian Science, is the dominant error which underlies the present depression? It is that set forth in Jesus' saying, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." It is the dominant belief among men that happiness, security, supply, and peace are to be found in loving material possessions, in accumulations of what is called money, instead of in loving God, Spirit, and their neighbors as themselves. This belief, so prevalent in the modern world, intensifies selfishness, greed, ruthlessness, and the other arguments of the carnal mind in business; for matter, unlike spiritual possessions, is in its very nature limited. It also intensifies the dominion of the five material senses over mortal thought, because in the main it is for the satisfaction of these senses that money is expended; and this preoccupation with the senses blinds men and women to Spirit, and therefore to the laws of spiritual conduct, upon obedience to which their salvation depends.
