Editorials

ONE of the most promising and prophetic things about Christian Science is the fact that it is broadening and deepening the sense of the divine requirements, the realization of what constitutes the privilege and prerogatives of a follower of the Master. Nothing so certainly interdicts spiritual progress as contentment with a superficial concept of things, and especially with regard to God and man, the nature of evil, and the fulness of our possible freedom therefrom.

KINSHIP between Christian Science and the primitive Christianity of the first three centuries is established by the test which the Master himself promulgated for all time: "Ye shall know them by their fruits. " Not that there have not been earnest Christian men and women in the intervening centuries, but up to the time of the discovery of Christian Science by Mrs.

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AT the dawn of 1916 the deepest hope held by all lovers of humanity is that men will be drawn together as at no former period in human history, and the bonds of true brotherhood be cemented so firmly in truth and righteousness that no belief of conflicting interests can again sever them. Such a consummation surely calls for a closer acquaintance with each other, based upon the truth of being as revealed in Christian Science.

TO those who measure their sense of time by days, weeks, months, and years, the infinitesimalness of mortal existence compared with the infinitude of God, of eternity, is particularly emphasized in that stately passage from the ninetieth psalm: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night .

The twelfth chapter of John's gospel records the awakening of many people to a new sense of life. Lazarus had been called from the tomb after he had been dead four days, according to the evidence of material sense, and soon thereafter the wonderful story was passed from one to another of the throngs of pilgrims who were on their way to participate in the passover at Jerusalem.

Thomas Paine advanced the idea that "instead of seeking to reform the individual, the nation should apply itself to the reform of the system," and Christian Scientists have been criticized not a little on the ground that in their distinctive individualism they neglect what are believed to be the larger, more promising opportunities to do good. It seems to be the conviction of these critics that men may be saved en masse ; that the millennium can be inaugurated by legislative enactment, and that of course at once.

Side by side with that commandment which bids us love God supremely and our neighbor as ourself, stands its complement, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. " To love God supremely is of necessity to put the advancement of His kingdom first in our affections, and Christian Scientists have proved again and again that so seeking they have indeed found all things are theirs.

ALL men recognize the contrast between the efficiency of Christ Jesus and that of even his most spiritual and exalted followers today. How shall this contrast be explained in our concept and scheme of things? Shall we link his strength to our weakness, his doing to our non-doing, by a contracting process, by insisting that his power was unique, possessed and to be possessed by none save the selected few upon whom he conferred a special endowment, so that our inefficiency may not seem to be out of keeping and ignoble? Or shall we think of his order as our standard, of his life as our pattern, of his work as ours, and thus be brought face to face with the grievousness of our delinquency? The first mental attitude is practically universal outside of Christian Science, and the direct and incidental effects of its assumption are momentous.

AS their Thanksgiving day draws near, citizens of the United States are wont to think a good deal about their national existence, and to discover if possible fresh reasons for thankfulness. In so doing the founders of the nation are never forgotten, their toils and sacrifices, their dauntless courage in clinging to their ideals when ofttimes it seemed as if these would suffer shipwreck on the rough rocks of divided opinions or on the treacherous sands of the lust of personal gain.