Editorials

FEW would be disposed to question the proposition that the concept of God is the most important factor of human progress. Paul recognized this in his Mars Hill address, where he said, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

THE recently published statement of the dean of a well-known Protestant cathedral, that "God never intended His people to have immunity from those ills to which flesh is heir; but that sickness, like all other disciplines of life, is to be treated as a means of spiritual education," is thrown into striking relief when put over against the word of the Lord to our fathers, saying, "I will take sickness away from the midst of thee," and the specific command of Christ Jesus to his disciples that they "heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. " When we recall the unnumbered assurances of the Bible that it is the will of God that those who accept His government should be well, and the corroborative fact that Christ Jesus constantly healed the sick of "all the ills to which flesh is heir;" when we read how the people came to him by the thousand, bringing the suffering and the diseased, and it is said again and again that he "healed them all," and then find those who are known as the ministers of Christ practically declaring that in all this blessed work the Master was defeating the divine purpose by robbing the beneficiaries of his ministry of the "means of spiritual education," then surely we have come upon an anomaly of colossal proportions.

Much  has been said of late years concerning the prevention and treatment of so-called contagious or infectious diseases by various material methods, and it is to be noted in this connection that whatever results may be claimed by the advocates of these methods, the area of such diseases, according to medical opinion, is steadily widening. It is held, on the basis of the germ theory, that nearly all diseases are communicable, consequently the segregation of sufferers is coming to be insisted upon as a means of prevention; this, too, in spite of the general admission that fear is a preponderating element in all diseases, and that separation from home and friends would have a disastrous effect by inducing the hopelessness which more than almost anything else needs to be guarded against.

IN reading the "Testimonies from the Field" published in each issue of this magazine, we find many instances where the writers have been healed of diseases which had been pronounced incurable by the physicians in attendance, and the present number is no exception in this regard. In these testimonies, as in all those which are given in our publications, the facts must be vouched for by some one knowing to the conditions of the healing, and preferably by a member of The Mother Church.

New York, N. Y.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

In the sermon by our revered Leader which was read at the dedication of The Mother Church in 1894, she says, "A new year is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise in white raiment;" and she adds, "Time past and time present, both, may pain us, but time improved is eloquent in God's praise" (Pulpit and Press, p. 3).

He was an earnest, truth-seeking man, and he had been told that while we are holding steadfastly to the truth of being we need to be alert and watchful, lest we be deceived by the claims of error, and especially in view of the fact that the dawning of spiritual apprehension uncovers the evil in human consciousness, and thus seemingly provokes its more vicious assertion and activity until it is destroyed by Truth. To this he answered, "These two attitudes of your statement appear to me to be mutually contradictory.

FOR most of us there are seasons and places which have such a peculiar charm that their remembrance makes us long for them like a little child, and these appeals often chronicle the simple fact that the veil of material sense has been somewhat withdrawn at times, so that we have looked beyond the seeming, and caught a glimpse of glorious verities of being, which have shone thereafter like stars in the firmament of memory. Were we always equally sensitive to the suggestions of the unseen, we should undoubtedly find that no season of the year and no point of view could fail to bring us these gladdening revelations of beauty and of Truth.

AT Thanksgiving time American citizens are always reminded of the deep gratitude they should feel for the rights and privileges which citizenship in this great republic implies. The names of the brave founders of this nation are recalled, and their heroic struggles and sacrifices for the cause of human freedom are rehearsed, that the people of to-day may be enabled to measure their debt to the men and women who laid the foundations of this country's greatness, and thus may be inspired to do their own part so nobly as to better the present time and enrich the future.