Editorials

Don't you feel we can probably do better in having an open, caring affection for each other—among Christian Science teachers? practitioners? church members? Selfless love among loyal members of the Christian community helped make the early Christian Church a bloc that no hammering of persecution could break. And what an obvious difference this spirit of love and unity makes in a church or in a Christian Science Students Association! It's like walking out of a patch of fog and into a field full of sunshine.

How we all long to feel loved and cared for—to feel that there is a safe haven where we can go for peace and rest. Especially in times of trial, temptation, and weariness we look for this safe place.

Only a "hair shirt" theology would impugn joy—suggesting that even the unselfish happiness of our lives is a sin and that virtue is to be found only in suffering. The human spirit naturally rebels at such a cruel notion.

The pages of this periodical are filled with explanation and proof that Christian Science corresponds with the Bible and fulfills its promises. No Bible prophecy is lovelier or timelier than the promise made to Noah that life would never again be overwhelmed by a flood of destruction.

The Bible tells us that God is infinite and perfect. See for example, Ps.

"Spiritual observation and self examination. " This was the theme for this year's Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Some years ago our children used to refer to a house we had lived in earlier as "the blue house. " That's the way they remembered it.

Often when attending a Wednesday testimony meeting, I've tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who may have just walked into a Christian Science church for the first time. Maybe the visitor has taken a seat in the balcony, or in the rear of the auditorium, or right down front in the first pew.

It would seem that with all the advances of civilization, humanity still has much to learn about how precious life actually is. Yet there is an answer to mankind's need for enlarging its sense of life's value.

Recently, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I saw a special exhibit of the paintings of the Italian seventeenth-century artist Caravaggio. The artist's use of light and shadow, his emphasis on realistic human detail, certainly showed his ability to appreciate and utilize both beauty and technique.