Articles

STUDENTS of Mrs. Eddy's text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," will recall the passage in which she says that we must "rise into higher and holier consciousness" (p.

BUNYAN, in his incomparable allegory, presents his pilgrim as fleeing from the City of Destruction— from the materiality of mortal sense, from the baselessness of earthly pleasure, from the tyranny of evil, from the fear of death—and crying, "Life! life! eternal life!" And indeed these little words "life" and "death" stand for the heart-hunger and the perpetual fear of all the ages. Joy and sorrow, hope and despondency, happiness and misery, love and loneliness, are in their content and suggestion.

THE opportunity to choose the more excellent way in life comes at some time to every man. He may not know the precise moment; the opportunity may present itself more than once; he may nut be conscious when or where he makes the choice.

THOUGHT is startled, with apparently increasing frequency, these days, by reports of "tragedies which witness to the willingness and desire of even good, unselfish, and professedly Christian men to flee the bounds of this mortal life, with the evident anticipation or hope that their conditions will thereby be improved, or at least that an endless sleep will bring escape from a no longer endurable experience. Such events, especially when they happen to some one we know, are apt to lead us to ask a question of the most practical significance, "Why?" Why, in a world which We have assumed is of God's creating, should one of His creatures find things so intolerable, so utterly hopeless and unbearable, that he should want to escape from it at any cost? It is a question which has troubled and baffled the wisest and the best.

THE Christian Science text-book informs us that "Life is divine Mind" (Science and Health, p. 469), and this statement is in agreement with the utterance of Jesus: "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

What is praise? First a song, second a prayer. A song rising in the human heart, welling up from the depths of being; an expression of joy, gratitude, love, thanksgiving to the infinite Father, to the author of all harmony.

BEGINNERS in the study of Christian Science sometimes claim that older students use terms which confuse the unlearned, but experience shows that even a slight understanding of the subject renders its phraseology intelligible to the observing student; and he in turn finds this thought surprising, so fully does learning alter the point of view. It seems to the writer that a custom more confusing, more apt to hinder the gain of true understanding, and one almost universal among students old and new, is that of using familiar words without explaining their significance in Christian Science.

REFORMERS of various schools, in their endeavor to help the victims of sin and sickness, have become aware that optimism is highly desirable. Never before have physicians and theologians, for example, insisted as strongly as they are doing today upon the value of optimism as an ally in the cure of the sick and sinning.

"THE effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man," wrote St. James, "availeth much;" and James was a follower of him who said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

SOMETIMES, in our walks among men, we meet one whose progress in Christian Science is so beautiful that it impresses us beyond degree. Standing face to face with convincing evidences of his spiritual illumination and achievement, and remembering that "by their fruits ye shall know them," we are quick to inquire by what means he has been able to make such a phenomenal advance, while we, perhaps, have gone only a little way.