Articles

To be known of men is to have a reputation, a possession which may belong to animate or inanimate objects. Personal reputation is based on the capacity to ascend above, or descend below, the ordinary range of human ability in some special line, while material objects are held in more or less repute, according to prevailing fashions rather than for any intrinsic values.

Anatomists , physiologists, physicians, and all students of what they term the "human organization," have spent more time and effort in their search for "life," than any other problem connected with existence; indeed, in the case of every investigator who has gone beyond the merely superficial, all other investigations have really been tributary to the great question. The amount of investigation expended in more recent years upon the brain, and nervous system and their action,—because the idea has prevailed that they were more intimately connected with "mind" or "life" than any of the other organs,—may be called, without much exaggeration, incalculable.

Since it has been my privilege to undertake the teaching of Christian Science, the following question, in some form or other, has been put to me so frequently, that I prepared the following answer, never thinking, for one moment, that it will be conclusive to all, for the discernment of the Truth, "that all is Mind; there is no matter," is not arrived at merely by a process of intellectual reasoning; but by a spiritual perception therewith. As so many have kindly said this method of reasoning has been a great help to them, it is now given to the public, with the hope that it may be of as much service to others.

Take a heretic, a rebel, a person that hath an ill cause to manage ; what he is deficient in the strength of his cause he makes up with diligence ; while he that hath right on his side is cold, indiligent, lazy, inactive, trusting that the goodness of his cause will not fail to prevail without assistance. So wrong prevails, while evil persons are jealous, and the good remiss.

Like all great truths in unfamiliar garb, Christian Science, too, must pass through the trying ordeal of being forced to run the criticizing gauntlet of the worldly-wise and skeptical. Though the struggle thus far has been one freighted with difficulties from within, as well as from without—for man is brought to accept plain truth and spiritual sight with great reluctance—we have much to encourage us, and be thankful for, in the knowledge that, through the sincerity and earnestness of many of its loving disciples, it has reached that point in the thoughts of the intelligent world,—from having made its influence felt,—where a discussion of its claims by unbelievers is no longer accompanied with scoff and ridicule.

Enduring Temptation against Political Prohibition We can never too strongly emphasize the necessity of the culture of self-control and moral power to resist all temptation. He who is sinless only because untempted, is not sinless.

A SYMBOL OF THE EVER-LIVING TREE OF THE WORLD'S LIFE. In parts of Germany, when at evenings the clouds rise and bear some resemblance to a great tree,—that is, when there is, as it were, a pillar of vapor between the horizon and the overreaching canopy of cloud,—the peasants call it "Abraham's Tree," or "Adam's Tree," says a writer in the Cornhill Magazine for December.

Chemists have labored to produce living matter, but so far have utterly failed in these endeavors. Organic matter has been analyzed, and its chemical constituents— carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur—are all known; but when chemists combine these elements in the same proportions, no breath comes, no throbbing heart, no blood-circulation; in fact, not the slightest trace of what we distinguish by the name of Life.

God has a host who measure the strength and completeness of their union with Him by their holy living, rather than by their high emotions. As saintly as Paul, or Wesley, or Fletcher, or Carvosso, or any of the elect women of the past, whose written lives have been such an inspiration to us, while I pen these lines I sit amid thronging memories of a multitude of living ones scattered here and there through the churches, who do not defile their garments.

Emily S. Bouton : "If I could only hear him say once, just as he used to in the early days of our married life, that he loves me, I believe I could go to work again without feeling that everything is such a dreary failure," said a weary woman to me once.