Editorials

To teach the truth of life without using the word death, its opposite, were as impossible as to define truth and not name its opposite, error. Straining at gnats, one may swallow camels.

Human suffering means more than pain; it has ever been a most perplexing problem. Though recognized by all Christian people as the sequence of sin, it is found to conform to no law of ethical fitness in its visitations, the good and the bad alike being subject to its pangs.

Among the many wonderful lessons given us by the Hebrew seers, none is of more vital interest to Christian Scientists than that found in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, in which the prophet tells his vision of a valley of dry bones that are made to feel the life-giving power of Spirit. It is an object-lesson of the resurrection toward which all human hope and faith have turned with a longing that refuses to be stifled, and that can be satisfied only as good is known to be spiritual and therefore immortal.

Several unsuccessful attempts to secure legislation O adverse to Christian Scientists have been made in the different State legislatures within the past few months, and it is worth noting that as a rule the proposed bills have not secured the approval of the committees to which they were referred. This was the case in both Massachusetts and New York.

ONE of the very evident signs of the times, from the religious standpoint, is the daring with which the most sacred topics are discussed in the light of modern conditions. There is certainly no cause to regret this free consideration of what are rightly regarded as vital questions, if mankind is thereby advanced and higher ideals attained.

PERHAPS no teaching of Christian Science is more misunderstood and resisted than that of the unreality of evil, and this fact is quite explicable when we remember that most people reach their conclusions through sense experience rather than through the processes of logical thought, and that the opinions of the educated as well as of the commoner are largely determined by the subtle influence of religious prejudice. It is none the less pitiful, however, to find religious writers in this late age playing into the hands of the enemies of a spiritual interpretation of nature and of life by their failure to discriminate between that which seems real to men and that which is real to God.

WE have clipped the following extract from an editorial in the Pacific Christian Advocate , and present it to our readers as an example of friendly criticism which recognizes some of the good fruits of Christian Science yet doubts the value of the tree which bears these fruits. The editor writes,— "We are not disposed to enter into any controversy with the Christian Scientists, and while we cannot agree with them on many points, we are not inclined to indulge in harsh criticisms of people whose lives are as beautiful as are the lives of those who live up to the teachings of Christian Science.

The following extract from a letter of John C. Higdon, Esq.

ONE who has been called "the wise man" said to those who were eager in their pursuit of material things,— the same things for which men to-day are giving their lives, —"With all thy getting, get understanding. " To the multitude this counsel may seem commonplace, not worth disputing, nor worth following to any great length, but to the thinker it embodies all the wisdom of the ages.

On page 760 of this issue we print under the above title a grand communication from Rev. F.