Editorials

IT cannot be denied that until the spiritual sense is awakened God seems very far off and heaven a place to be reached only after death. While it is true that advanced thinkers would probably disclaim such concepts, we need only question ourselves in order to find how they cling to us even after we have had assurance of better things.

WHEN Harold B said recently that "we are approaching a period in human history more momentous than any which has gone before," he voiced the conviction of many, and one of the legitimate grounds of this forecast may be found in the manifest significance of the present world struggle to the prevailing concept of Deity. The old query, "Why does a God who assertedly hates evil and has the power to prevent its awful tragedies, allow it to run riot in ways that shock the moral sense of even ordinary men?" is upon the lips of more Christian people today than at any other period of human history.

IN these days of rapid progress and swift movement of events it may not be amiss, at times when questions of importance to the welfare of a church are under consideration, for its members to give themselves pause long enough to look things squarely in the face, rather than open the way to be swept off safe ground by hasty and ill-advised action. Centuries intervened between the promise spoken to Isaiah, "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste," and its fulfilment in the coming of the Christ, the divine idea, in the man Jesus.

WITH all their sarcastic queries and faultfindings, their criticisms and imputations, always daring and ofttimes cruel, Job's friends said not a few true things. Moreover, they sometimes spoke far better than they knew,—a virtue into which advisers not infrequently stumble,—and a good instance of this is found in the words of Eliphaz, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God], and be at peace.

ON many occasions Mrs. Eddy counsels us to follow the example of Christ Jesus in our efforts to demonstrate the truth of being.

IN establishing the Christian Science movement Mrs. Eddy adopted precisely the same course as did the Master when he entered upon his mission of redemption.

THE theology of Christian Science makes its first strong appeal to those who are suffering in "mind, body, or estate," in telling them that God is as ready to help them today as He was in the time when Jesus healed all manner of disease without recourse to material means. When this statement is supported by actual proof, the one healed is ready to give up his long held belief that the day of miracles is past, but he soon finds out that if he would advance in spiritual understanding (and this is greatly urged in the Bible) he must gain the deeper meaning of the Scriptures which Christian Science insists upon.

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.

" A NEW year is a .