Editorials

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.

INAUGURATED by the Pilgrim Fathers in gratitude for divine protection and bounty, the custom of setting apart one day in the year for a special service of prayer and thanksgiving to God is one that may well be perpetuated. To be reminded even for a few brief hours that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" is surely better than utterly to ignore one's obligations, and to listen to the Thanksgiving service can but quicken every thoughtful man and woman to a keener and more lasting appreciation of their daily and hourly indebtedness to the great Giver for all that they have and are, and likewise to the necessity and fitness of continuous gratitude therefor.

IT is safe to say that Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science made its first appeal to people through the basic teaching that Mind is all and does all.

THERE are few things more degrading in their influence A upon character than mental dishonesty. It is the obsequient handmaid of ignorance and superstition, the subtly lying foe of personal integrity.

"MY little children," counseled the disciple whom Jesus loved, "let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. " No other of the apostolic writers, in fact, seems to have so clearly discerned as did John the spirit of what Jesus characterized as the summing up of the law and the prophets, namely, to love God supremely and one's neighbor even as one's self.

IN order to project the topography of a given area, the engineer must first of all determine his present elevation by means of a barometer and then establish an accurately measured base-line. With these two reckonings all his future computations and conclusions have immediately to do.

IN the gospels we are told that on at least two occasions the divine Spirit testified to Jesus' spiritual sonship, the first occasion being at his baptism by John in the Jordan. We are also told that at the transfiguration this again occurred in a way which is most significant.

SOMETIMES we hear people who have been only a short while in the way of Christian Science express surprise and even disappointment that it has not proved the rose-bordered path they had pictured. Because Christian Scientists as a rule manifest so much of joy and happiness, the outsider is apt to regard them as singularly free from trouble or care, and to the new-found faith the knowledge that there are still trials to be met comes with something of a shock.

It usually takes considerable time and mental effort for the average mortal to let go of the material and personal concept of individuality, and to grasp the spiritual idea presented in Christian Science. Indeed at times it seems as if nothing could bridge the gulf between the old and the new, and yet the Christ-teaching does this very thing.