What may properly be termed the judicial habit should prevail, in a peculiar sense, among Christian Scientists. We know of no people who should be more impartial, more tolerant, more charitable. It is the lack of these qualities that leads to partisanship, contention, division, and harshness of judgment. We are too apt to run to extremes, and to see in those whose characters and conduct seem to comport with our views only that which is good, unmixed with any element of evil or wrong; while in others we see only evil, without any admixture of good. This leads to undue admiration on the one hand, and undue criticism or condemnation on the other. We should endeavor to see both of these qualities for just what they are: mortal weaknesses rather than virtues. It is the failure to exercise the judicial quality that causes us to see or grasp a given or isolated statement of our text-book, and adopt it as an absolute rule for our guidance, perchance, to the exclusion of other statements which should be considered and understood in connection therewith.
Courts of justice in construing a statute consider all the different parts of it and construe them together, if possible, in such a way as to harmonize the whole. This is what should be done with our text-book, as well as all other authoritative writings on the subject of Christian Science. Unless this is done, we are apt to get partial and erroneous views, either falling short of the true mark or running to unhealthful excesses, according as we fall into the error.
Then, too, human courts of justice endeavor to be, and indeed fall short of their mission if they are not, strictly impartial in dealing with parties to controversies who present their claims for adjudication. This is as it should be in all human affairs. This rule should much more prevail in the ranks of those who are endeavoring to work out the highest conceptions of a practical Christianity.
