Editorials

Religious reformers have usually been convinced the ways of the world weren't right. From the Old Testament's Jeremiah to the eighteenth century's Jonathan Edwards to some of today's spiritually discerning clergy, they have told people—usually outspokenly—to forsake worldly ways and adopt spiritual and moral values.

There's an old blues ballad from Porgy and Bess that goes, "Summertime, an' the livin' is easy,/Fish are jumpin', an' the cotton is high.

I have a number of friends who have commented about how glad they are that their sons and daughters don't face the threat of war and the conflicts of social upheaval that they themselves did in the 1960s. And while there is plenty of upheaval in the 1980s, many grandparents are grateful that their grandchildren aren't beginning their adult lives during years of worldwide economic depression and war.

Over the past ten years or so, considerable attention has been given to a phenomenon called the near-death experience. Books have been written, psychological studies conducted, personal histories compiled.

The novelist and historian of Stalinist repression, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, refers in his Nobel prize speech to a Russian proverb: "One word of truth outweighs the world. "   Nobel Lecture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

From the beginning of recorded history, mankind has searched after wisdom. In the book of Proverbs the writer paints a vivid portrait.

A sermon that appeared earlier this year in an issue of The Christian Ministry tells of the time when the great composer George Frederick Handel was going through rough waters in his life and career. He had recently faced a serious illness that left his hands partially crippled.

First thought: Discovery is everything. Second thought: There is one paramount amendment to that first thought.

The Yellow Kid was an infamous "con man" in the United States earlier in this century. He sold talking dogs that couldn't.

Researchers working in a specialized area of computer technology are beginning to develop sophisticated mechanisms called "virtual reality" simulators. These devices would allow a person to enter very persuasive three-dimensional environments that could be created and controlled electronically, either by the user or through a predetermined computer program.