Editorials

MUCH of the objection to the teaching of Christian Science respecting the unreality of evil is on the ground that evil supplies an essential condition to the perfectibility of man, God's image and likeness! It is averred that moral character is dependent upon the making of choice between right and wrong, and that if there were not a real evil as well as a real good, such choice or determination would be impossible, and man's so-called freedom become a farce. It is argued that if man were not free to choose the wrong, he would be a mere automaton, without merit for his right doing, and wholly lacking in that virtue which is the fruitage of loyalty to good despite the seductions of evil.

AN argument often urged by non-believers in Christian Science runs thus: If Christian Science is founded on the Bible, why separate yourselves from other Christian denominations? One might ask in return, Why so many Christian denominations? If all believe in the Bible, why not unite and in one great body conquer the world for Christ? Mrs. Eddy answers the first of the above questions simply and clearly when she says: "The theology of Christian Science' includes healing the sick.

EDUCATED bias constitutes a serious disability to the understanding of Christian Science, and it has been peculiarly manifest in Christian believers, especially theologians. A great and eventful change is, however, taking place.

No careful student of Christian Science would deny that its chief offense to the average thinker is its insistent denial of matter and material law, but just here it should be remembered that Truth's idea, from its very nature, cannot adapt itself to human opinion, but must of necessity lift thought from the material to the spiritual. This was certainly the case at the beginning of the Christian era, and St.

THE extent to which some people would be willing to place "the issues of life and death" in the hands of physicians, is shown in a symposium on euthanasia in a recent issue of the Medical Review of Reviews, and it is perhaps just as well, at the beginning, to give the meaning of this high-sounding word euthanasia in plain every-day English as it appears in the Standard dictionary, which is, "A means for producing a gentle and easy death. " The question discussed by the contributors to this symposium was whether physicians should resort to means for producing death in cases which they considered hopeless.

There is perhaps no teaching of Christian Science which is so generally misunderstood by outsiders as that which relates to the punishment of sin. One who knows what is taught in Science and Health regarding this question is almost tempted to say that it is wilfully misunderstood, for Mrs.

All worthy thought of God as divine intelligence attributes purpose and not chance or fate to His activities, and unless He were dualistic, the union of good and evil, His will must be one and wholly good, since the wisdom and immutability of God interdict the thought of any shifting of His purpose. Christ Jesus expressly declared that he came to do his Father's will, and from this we can but conclude that the doing of the Master's work for mankind, the healing of sickness and sin, not only must have been, but must forever be, the will of God, and that men should now attain to that exalted state of freedom, of health, and of spiritual supremacy into which Jesus was ever seeking to bring them.

Jesus epitomized his mission to mankind in the single brief sentence from the book of the prophet Isaiah which he read in the synagogue at Nazareth the first Sunday after his return to the home of his boyhood, declaring its fulfilment as the office of Christ in himself: "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 brokenhearted, 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 to this same end that he commissioned the little band of disciples whom he later sent out "to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick;" and that this work was to be continued is evidenced in this all-inclusive statement: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.

It is invariably true that every vital uncompromising statement of divine truth proves to be both an inspiration and an offense. Illuminating and corrective, it comes to confirm the intuitions, the spiritual visions of those who have loved the truth for its own sake, and who, have awakened to the deadening effect upon the higher life of unquestioning devotion to forms and creeds.

One of the most vital utterances of Christ Jesus was his declaration to the Samaritan woman that as God is Spirit, He must be worshiped "in spirit and in truth. " This was said to one who evidently thought that moral delinquencies could be covered up by a certain amount of religious knowledge and observance of outward forms, but it is also evident that she was ready for something better; that she was actually hungering for the spirituality which was then offered her by one who was ever ready to prove the truth of his words.