Articles

You have asked for answers to your question, "Who are the ten greatest living Americans?" While your question expressly excepts those in political life, it does not expressly except women, though you seem to assume that the ten greatest living Americans are "mere male men. " Herein I differ with you.

The belief in loss and limitation seems today to be well-nigh universal. Many of us find ourselves mesmerized by this all-pervading atmosphere and are struggling to rise above its density to a clearer altitude, where spiritual perception, unbemurked by clouds of sense, will enable us to recognize the unreality and the falsity of this claim.

SOME time ago a friend told me he thought idealism so vague and mystical that it was of little use in practical life. Since then I have been thinking much about the right meaning of idealism, how under present conditions it can help us to work out some of the great problems with which we must engage whether we will or not.

OCCASIONALLY the student of Christian Science has to deal with an objection or criticism couched somewhat as follows : "You say that good is the only reality, and that the real man—the man of God's creating—is absolutely good, so that it is impossible for him to do evil; what, then, becomes of the freedom of the will if a man is a mere automaton, incapable of choice? What virtue is there in doing good or in being good if that condition is inevitable?" This false sense alike of "freedom" and of "will" implies a power apart from and unlike God, therefore this objection is really but a variant of that familiar query, "What is the origin of evil?" Precisely as one must reply that there is no origin to evil, because evil is nonexistent as an entity, and as a false belief has no origin, cause, or principle and can have none, so one is obliged to reply that in the false sense in which the objector uses the words, there is no freedom of the will. The true sense of "freedom" and of "will" is perverted when we turn from the freedom and the will which characterize God to seek the counterfeits of both as they appear in mortals.

AS commonly understood, we live in two realms, a material and a spiritual, and while we are said to derive our ideals from the spiritual, they need to be adjusted, in their practical adaptation, to the exigencies of the material. This teaching, however, Mrs.

DURING the dark days of the American Civil War, when the affairs of state had become a burden almost too heavy to be borne by the chief magistrate of the nation, when hearts everywhere were filled with fear, and when the preservation of the Union was almost despaired of, it is stated that a woman in conversation with President Lincoln said to him, "Let us pray that God will be on our side. " Without hesitation, Lincoln replied, "Let us rather pray that we may be on God's side.

ONE of the truths learned by our Leader was that "Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and everpresent" (Science and Health, p. 108).

THAT there is a use as well as an abuse of the function of criticism, is evident from the words of Jesus, who, besides saying, "Judge not," also says, "Judge righteous judgment. " The verb used in the Greek is the same in both cases, and bears the same meaning as the noun from which the English word "critic" is derived, that is.

A VERY considerable part of the thinking people of today are darkened by doubt, if not despair, on the subject of religion. Because of their disobedience to the command of Jesus to heal the sick according to the way which he taught and exemplified, and because that which calls itself orthodox Christianity persists in representing God as a self-contradictory and wholly illogical being, the pulpits of Christendom have lost much of the power to persuade men which they formerly possessed.

In the history of the American Revolution two names stand over against each other as showing the clearly defined results of working for self or working for Principle, the names of Benedict Arnold and Philip Schuyler. There were similarities in the circumstances of these men.