TRUE ECONOMY by L. A. Reed

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 9, 1900

TRUE ECONOMY.

By L. A. Reed

L. A. REED. (Jacksonville, Ill.)

WHATEVER spiritual truths or principles we learn we should be able to apply in the natural world; for the spiritual and the natural are built upon the same plan. One is not entirely different from the other. The natural is not to be understood and interpreted by principles that have no bearing upon things spiritual. The natural and the spiritual are but different aspects of TRUTH. And truth, though many-sided, is still a UNIT. TRUTH, though all-embracing, is but one, not two. Perhaps we may call the natural but the form, and the spiritual the essence, of truth; but even then there can be no variance between the two.

“The natural and the spiritual are to be combined in the studies of our schools. The operations of agriculture illustrate the Bible lessons. The laws obeyed by the earth reveal the fact that it is under the masterly power of an infinite God. THE SAME PRINCIPLES RUN THROUGH THE SPIRITUAL AND THE NATURAL WORLD.”—“Special Testimonies on Education,” pages 215, 216. Theological truth should lead us to an understanding of natural truth. The operations of nature should help us to understand the operations of the Spirit. One assists the other. “Rightly understood, science and the written Word agree, and each sheds light on the other. TOGETHER they lead us to God, by teaching us something of the wise and beneficent laws through which he works.”—Id., page 57. “God has, in the natural world, placed in the hands of the children of men the key to unlock the treasure-house of his word. THE UNSEEN IS ILLUSTRATED BY THE SEEN; divine wisdom, eternal truth, infinite grace, ARE UNDERSTOOD by the things that God has made. Then let the children and youth become acquainted with nature and nature’s laws.”—Id., page 61.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Maupertuis, the mathematician, grasped at this truth. Seizing upon a theological dogma, he assumed it to be a fundamental principle of mechanics. He maintained that the divine Being, being unerringly wise, would waste no energy; that everything in nature must therefore be done with perfect economy of force. This theological dogma is called, in mechanics, the principle of least action, or the law of least time. In science, it becomes an invaluable and fruitful principle.

Looking at this principle from the theological side, we find it most forcibly taught in connection with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus said, after he had fed the multitude, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” John 6:12. With five barley loaves and two small fishes, Christ had just fed about five thousand persons. And when the fragments had been gathered up, the disciples filled twelve baskets with the remnants. The divine power that gave the manna for forty years, the power that for a year replenished the widow’s cruse of oil and barrel of meal, could have continued the miracle of the loaves and fishes to this day, filling the world with stores of food.

But such a course would not be in harmony with the character of God. To simply supply food to a few hungry beings was not all, nor the full, meaning of that miracle. It “was a sudden putting forth of the Almighty arm from behind the veil of his ordinary providence, to show once for all by a great and lasting sign the DIVINE SOURCE OF THE COMMON BLESSINGS OF LIFE.” In the bread that you and I eat to-day, there is as much of a miracle of God as was that yonder by Capernaum. True, the miracle of to-day is wrought by the wheat and the barley of the broad acres of the farmer, coupled with toil and labor. But that of two thousand years ago was wrought through five loaves and two fishes, and that is all the difference. God did that then by his supernatural and omnipotent power, and God does this to-day in the same manner.

And as the farmer now by diligent economy receives the gift of God, so they then so far as was possible exercised the same economy. But the purpose of that economy in each case was and is the same. To be wasteful and extravagant is to despise the GIFT of God. And to despise, to esteem lightly, the gift, is to despise and lightly esteem the Giver. True economy is nothing but a right appreciation of the blessings of God. And that we may be truly economical, God has left us the words of Jesus, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” And in addition to this, in everything that he has done, he has linked the most lavish generosity with the most rigid economy. But this last thought we must leave for later consideration.