In Science and Health (p. 233) Mrs. Eddy writes: "Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil." The standard here set for her followers is the one which Mrs. Eddy herself maintained, ever tending and fostering the seed of Truth and encouraging its growth toward the fulfilment of the vision vouchsafed her—the time when the restoration of the Christ-healing would be universally acknowledged and accepted and the peace and harmony of God's kingdom firmly established in the hearts of men.
The Christian Science periodicals have had a significant part in the dissemination of the truth discovered by Mrs. Eddy, the scientific law which governed the works of healing wrought by the Master, and in the rich abundance of today we sometimes fail to remember how great is our indebtedness for the wise foresight of the Leader under whose guidance the evolution of these white-winged messengers of the "fruit of the Spirit" has been accomplished, and how many sorrowing hearts have been comforted, despairing ones roused to new hope and life, as they have gone forth on their worldwide mission of mercy.
Doubtless there are many among our readers who, as they open this first number of the thirtieth volume, will go back in thought to those precious first issues of the Journal, and recall how much their coming, radiant with hope and cheer, meant to the students of those days. Few of our readers need to be informed that Mrs. Eddy not only established the Journal, but that for a number of years she was its proprietor, publisher, and editor. It seems incredible, with the multitudinous demands on her time, that Mrs. Eddy could have carried on such an undertaking, but the need and importance of this aid to the cause was so impressed upon her that, writing editorially in an early issue of her reasons for establishing this magazine, she says that it "has become a necessity," because, as she goes on to explain, "further enlightenment is necessary for the age, and a periodical devoted to this work seems alone adequate to meet the requirement." Then, in conclusion, she strikes the key-note whose reverberations found expression as the years went by in the outgrowths from this parent magazine, the Sentinel, Herold, and Monitor, successively organized to meet the varying and increasing needs of the field. She writes: "If we can aid in abating suffering and diminishing sin, we shall have accomplished much; but if we can bring to the general thought this great fact that drugs do not, cannot, produce health and harmony, since 'in Him [Mind] we live, and move, and have our being,' we shall have done more" (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 4, 8).
