If asked what money is, almost any one can answer glibly that it is a medium of exchange. Few stop to consider, however, what it really is that is exchanged or how the process actually goes on. Most people would say offhand that material commodities are the basis for the transaction of business. Yet the commodities themselves would be valueless without some sort of a mind to conceive of them as desirable, useful, and satisfying. In fact, all one has of any seeming thing is one’s concept of it. Reasoning briefly in this way, one must recognize that the so-called material thing is just a belief in what Christian Science terms the mortal mind, and that it is this mind which supposes itself able to determine utility and value. In human affairs, then, the commodities are exchanged not as mere matter but as the suppositional mortal mind’s concepts, known as goods. The whole volume of business in the world is but an exchange of these concepts, a process carried on by the human mind, which is itself only hypothetical.

Thus to see the mental nature of the process of exchange is not alone enough to enable one to discern the true spiritual activity in place of the human seeming. This sort of explanation of goods as human concepts is simply elementary political economy. Christian Science, in explaining and demonstrating the reality of value or of any other entity, does not stop with mortal concepts. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 123 of Science and Health, “Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas.” All this seeming human exchange of goods is but suppositional counterfeit of the continuously varied activity eternally unfolding in the divine Mind which is infinite and all that really exists. There could not even seem to be a mortal mind with its beliefs unless there is first the true Mind expressing itself as spiritual idea. The fact is that existence in infinite Mind is the only true living there is.

The truth that there is one boundless divine Mind manifesting itself as harmonious spiritual action does not rest on any system of human philosophy. Though human philosophy may have developed some basis for belief in one supreme God, no human philosophy has ever established the demonstrable truth that the idea, or activity, of the one perfect Principle is the Christ, which replaces all manner of human limitations with the abundance of spiritual good. It has remained for Christian Science to show that the Christ is available to-day for the healing of the world’s false beliefs through the replacement of them with the divine idea.

The fact is that divine intelligence expressed is all that is valuable. The real man, expressing true intelligence, is rendering valuable service in accord with Principle. Since cause would not be cause without effect, the whole activity which constitutes genuine man is necessary in order that the divine Mind may be manifest. The action of perfect Mind, quite apart from any illusion of materiality, is all that can ever be of real value. This action is spiritual harmony, regardless of any human names that may be given to it. Spiritual man is just a name for spiritual activity emanating from infinite Mind. This divine emanation is complete, unlimited, ever fully sustained by its inexhaustible cause.

Money, considered as a medium of exchange, is thought of as a means of activity, since exchange is just a form of action. The true man, manifesting Principle, is himself completely maintained in action by his creator. Man’s unlimited harmony in expressing divine intelligence is, then, the true activity of which the mortal belief of money is merely a suppositional counterfeit. Sooner or later each one has to prove for himself that the real man succeeds in all that he is doing, not because of any human money but because of expressing divine intelligence.

How is this truth to be applied in everyday affairs? If a man seems to lack money, to have too much money, or to be confused in his monetary dealings, his first work is to turn to the divine Mind and reason intelligently on the basis that infinite Mind, with its spiritual idea, is the present reality, in spite of human sense testimony. In proportion as he understands that the intelligent activity constituting the real man is abundant, without excess, and ever rightly ordered, he finds the belief of lack, excess, or disorder vanishing in one way or another. Seeming obstructions turn out to be opportunities. The very desire first of all to express divine intelligence is fulfilled by reason of the truth that there is always infinite intelligence to express. If a man knows nothing more than that the true man expresses boundless intelligence which manifests itself as exactly right activity, he has a basis for cheerful and confident reasoning in accord with Principle—for the practice of Christian Science. In the presence of this spiritual reasoning, any human sense of values is soon readjusted more to the divine standard by the disappearance of just so much belief in limitation.

Activity, then, that proceeds from intelligent divine Principle alone is valuable. On pages 267 and 268 of “Miscellaneous Writings” Mrs. Eddy says: “The predisposing and exciting cause of all defeat and victory under the sun rests on this scientific basis: that action, in obedience to God, spiritualizes man’s motives and methods, and crowns them with success; while disobedience to this divine Principle materializes human modes and consciousness, and defeats them.” To accept spiritual consciousness as the only actuality of experience is to understand genuine value, in place of any human concepts of money. This acceptance of the truth is a simple, practicable process to the student of Christian Science, who is always entitled to utilize for himself the abundance of spiritual wealth.