IF there is one characteristic which more than another marks out the Christian Scientist from among the average of his fellows, it is his early emergence from fixed forms of belief along any line, and his increasing readiness to make careful inquiry into any mode of thought or practice in the world's manifold activities which would seem to hold the promise of betterment for mankind. Consequently there is an increasing and sympathetic interest in the well defined progressive movement at present sweeping over the civilized world, and presenting such striking features that even the casual observer cannot avoid taking cognizance of it.
In the United States of America this movement has taken a form which perhaps for want of a better term has been called "insurgency." Outwardly it is a protest against the existing order of things political as portrayed by the two great parties; but the roots lie deeper down, and essentially it is of spiritual origin, indicative of the moral unrest which is being felt in all quarters, and bringing forth a desire for better conditions and the purer administration of affairs. As a result of it there is a stirring of all the complex problems of material existence, and also a potential readjustment which speaks eloquently of a higher and more intelligent apprehension of the duties of man to his fellows. What ultimate changes this movement will effect, can now only be guessed at.
In England the same activity is also positively insurgent, though bearing no such definitely descriptive label. Here the protest is of even deeper significance, for it is striking at the very root of hereditary privilege, and the struggle for advancement is even more markedly emphatic than in America, for it presages changes in the order of things that are many centuries old and firmly grafted upon the body politic. The new order, when it shall have come into full being, may indeed rank as of secondary importance only to the Magna Charta of the thirteenth century, and equal in effect to the Reformation, for it even now hints at a greater spiritual freedom.
