Editorials

There is no Christian belief which is more universally  entertained than that in the divine illumination and impulsion of the Scripture writers, and this belief has begotten a prevailing mental attitude of reverence toward the Bible, a sense of its uniqueness, its value, and its authority. Nevertheless, inquiry as to just what is meant by the declaration that the Bible is an inspired book would disclose much indefiniteness if not contradiction in the views held, and some of these involve such vital issues as render the subject worthy of a consideration it has never received at the hands of the great body of Christian people.

A new year has come, and we find ourselves wondering what it will bring to the world and to ourselves as individuals. With respect to the latter, we may well ask what lessons the departed year has brought us.

In a recent issue of the New York Sun was quoted a letter from a man distinguished in literature, addressed to the young soldiers fighting in the trenches who had no father, mother, or friend to send them a word of cheer. Extracts from the many letters received by one who having no son of his own sent an embrace to those who had no father, are pathetic in their revelation of the craving of the human heart for affection.

One of the most dramatic moments in the life of the Master was that in which, having entered the synagogue of his home village, he opened the book of the prophet Isaiah and read those wonderful words of Messianic forecast: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. " It was the moment of his first public self-recognition, when he daringly yet calmly declared that he who was known to them all as a humble carpenter's son, was indeed the hope of Israel, their Saviour.

Each year, as November draws to a close, the citizens of the United States recall anew the many reasons they have for thankfulness, and chief among these is their existence as a nation standing for the loftiest ideals of government known to any people. Vast and splendid as is their territory, stretching from the arctic circle to the tropics, and rich in all that makes for material wealth, yet this counts for nothing when compared with what the nation has stood for in its recognition of the rights and responsibilities of manhood.

Whatever may be claimed to the contrary, it can be safely said that Christian Scientists are daily doing their part in lifting the burden from sorrowful humanity. Mrs.

In all the crises of human experience, those who are in any wise spiritually awakened turn to the Bible for consolation; nor is this strange, since we find in the fortieth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah the command, "Comfort ye my people, saith your God. " Then follows the message to be given to an afflicted people at that day,—"Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished.

All ethical questions, all the important issues connected with human progress, are related to and bound up with a yet greater question, namely, that respecting the nature and allness of Deity, an answer to which must antedate the profitable discussion of every vital matter, since it conditions all rational thought. It is this fact that renders the maintenance of the perfection of the divine character, as taught in Christian Science, of such immeasurable significance.

Until we learn to think with the understanding which is the reward of a knowledge of divine Science, we are wont to regard vision as purely a matter of seeing with the material eyes, as something dependent on mortal sight. We pity the blind as those deprived of the beauties of earth and sky, when we should remember, as Mrs.

THAT all real progress, all genuine gain, is an educational advance, the displacement of the error in human consciousness by truth, is a mere truism, and yet how frequently we all need to be reminded of it. This thought of salvation as the attainment of wisdom was expressed by the Master in his teaching that freedom is to be gained as we "know the truth," and it is reechoed in Mrs.