Editorials

AS the years go by, and the Bible is studied more and more by Christian Scientists, a desire comes at times to grasp more fully the meaning of the passages which seem to be obscure, the difficulty in many cases being due to their Oriental setting. All who are familiar with the literature of Christian Science are aware that Mrs.

IN reading the new volume, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," in which is garnered up for us the ripened wisdom of our revered Leader's lifelong endeavor for the uplift of humanity, one cannot fail to be impressed, among other helpful features, with the dignity and forcefulness of its Foreword. The largeness of vision, the keen foresight of threatening dangers, the tender admonition, the conservative summing-up of what had been accomplished in the establishment of the cause of Christian Science,—all these bring clearly before us the immensity of our obligation as followers of so devoted a Leader, when weighed in the balances of service to mankind.

IN crossing the bridge which connects the passing year with a new one, the more thoughtful are apt to look back, and then forward, and this always with the hope that the new year will bring better things than has the old. If it should fail to fulfil this expectation, it would only prove that the hope had not unfolded into faith and thus laid hold upon eternal reality.

THERE never was, never can be a more fatuous undertaking than that upon which men enter when they essay to fool themselves by trying, in some one thing, to evade the requirements of the simple, straightforward logic which they unhesitatingly recognize and act upon in other things. Upon inquiry respecting the matter, the average Christian believer will aver that God is the source of all real being, and that He is wholly good.

"A NEW year," Mrs. Eddy says in the opening sentence of the sermon written for the dedicatory service of The Mother Church edifice, Jan.

APART from the teachings of Christian Science, the relation supposed to exist between soul and body was at one time discussed with a good deal of freedom, when we consider the impossibility of reaching any definite conclusions on the subject by material means. The writer once heard two good deacons disputing warmly over the location of the soul, one insisting that it was in the brain, and the other being quite certain that it was in the heart, and each quoted Scripture in support of his argument.

Practitioners of Christian Science are ofttimes criticized for accepting fees for the treatment of the sick, on the basis that as the Master and his disciples healed the sick without money and without price, Christian Scientists, who profess to be his followers in word and in deed, should do likewise. In the early years of Christian Science Mrs.

Christian Scientists everywhere will welcome the announcement, from the publisher of Mrs. Eddy's books, in the Sentinel of Nov.

THE book of Job has been called by a profound thinker, "a masterpiece of Semitic genius," and scholars have found much pleasure in its dramatic and majestic presentation of the problem of human suffering and the attempts of philosophy and scholastic theology to account for it. Apart from the views of critics and scholars, the wayfaring man, when himself oppressed by the heavy burden of suffering, whether mental or physical, is greatly drawn to the book of Job, and ofttimes is tempted to echo the sad plaint of this just man who, according to the story, had to endure untold misery because Satan desired to afflict him.

AS one comes to think of it, there is no familiar physical fact so central, so all-surrounding as light. Three million suns stud the firmament as silent witnesses to its universality, hence the fitness and frequency of its symbolic use by the Scripture writers.