Editorials

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.

Jesus' declaration, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick," is often cited as proof that he believed in the efficacy of material means, yet in the light of his own practise and the rule laid down for his followers in all ages, this is but a figure of speech, explained in the sentence which immediately follows: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. " It was through the power of Spirit, "the finger of God," that he healed those who, believing, came or were brought to him, it mattered not by what name the physicians of that day had diagnosed the disease.

IN the epistle of James we find several admonitions as to faith and patience and their close relation to each other. He begins by saying: "The trying of your faith worketh patience;" and he adds, "Let patience have her perfect work.

THE world is indebted to physical science for two most important lessons, namely, that all law is to be verified by practical demonstration, and that we command, are able to utilize, law in the measure that we obey it. The goal of the spiritual life is the apprehension of divine law by each one for himself.

THERE is an old adage to the effect that there is no royal road to learning. He who would gain other than a superficial knowledge of any subject must, be he of high or low degree from the worldly standpoint, work out his own salvation, must acquire a demonstrable knowledge of its fundamental truths, and then proceed to put them to the test, prove by his fruits the genuineness of his growth.