Economics is a subject that engrosses the thought and attention of the thinkers and statesmen of all nations, for they sincerely believe that on a right plan of economics depends the prosperity of the people. Economics here has to do with the consideration of the material resources and wealth of a country, their production, distribution, and consumption. This sometimes leads in political economy to governmental management of these resources, which have been defined as "the material means of satisfying human desires." Much selfless and devoted thought has been given to this study, and many and varied have been the laws laid down to govern the economics of the nations, to regulate their production, distribution, and consumption. None of them as yet has proved fully satisfactory, nor ever will, until human economy patterns the divine.
This failure successfully to manage the economics of material resources is, of course, based on the false premise that man is a material organism dependent on matter for his good, his health, his happiness and prosperity, for his very life. Any law based on this false premise, while it may, in a degree, regulate human economics, will never maintain equality of distribution or satisfy human desires. No matter how equally material so-called wealth may come to be distributed, unless that distribution is accompanied by intelligence and love enough wisely to manage and needfully to share those resources, there will continue to be vast differences in the possession and enjoyment of materially considered wealth and comfort. There will still be poverty on one side and wealth on the other. This apparent fact is sufficient to prove that economy based on materialism, taking no account of mental or spiritual values, can never succeed in maintaining equal prosperity.
Christ Jesus was the most intelligent and successful economist the world has ever known. He gave a forceful example of true economy, of production, distribution, and consumption, in what is called the miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two small fishes. None need scoff at this story as a legend, or declare it to be a supernatural act, an intervention of divine Providence. Christian Science declares it to be evidence of a divine law demonstrated by one who fully understood that law, and who declared that understanding and demonstration to be available to all who believe and obey his teachings. This law of Love is ever operating and at hand to be understood. On page 327 of Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy says: "To the physical senses, the strict demands of Christian Science seem peremptory; but mortals are hastening to learn that Life is God, good, and that evil has in reality neither place nor power in the human or the divine economy."
