Articles

All students of Christian Science know how important are the Scriptures, and they invariably become Bible students. They become students, however, not of the mere historical facts of the Bible, but they seek to find the spiritual significance of the passages they may be studying.

Human living may be said to be a continuous striving to represent truly the ideal. There is scarcely an individual, however humble or exalted his position, gloomy and apparently hopeless his outlook on life or rich in material wealth and big with promise his future, who has not known a deep-lying conviction of a higher and sublimer goal to be attained than that held out by material environment.

In the present seething mental turmoil, when more strenuous attempts than ever before are being made to enthrone the human mind; when charlatans and deluded intellectuals alike proclaim it to be omnipotent; when the claim to dominate the world by mental means, no matter how evil, is thundering its vacuous nothingness; when the enemy of Christ is striving to "divide and rule;" when shortsighted, impetuous Peters rush to take the sword of material means in the attempt to rebuke sheer nothingness, to allay the necessary and salutary chemicalization that is the sure sign and promise of the coming of the wholeness which is the Christ; when weary workers, fainting under the charge to "watch with me one hour" begin to ask themselves whether it is any longer safe or wise to return good for evil, and whether the Sermon on the Mount is sufficient equipment for the fight against evil: when all these things are clamoring to be heard, it is well to remember that Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered that "evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power" (Science and Health, p. 330 ), and who ordered her life in accordance with that truth, never permitted considerations of the enormity or subtlety of evil to deter her or to mesmerize her into personalizing evil, into dignifying a bewildered human mind with any shade or grade of importance or power.

The educated man of today, although rejecting the accusation that he is even now victimized by superstitious beliefs, probably maintains, if he be a student of the history of religion, that superstition has been an aid to civilization. The word concurs in meaning with the Greek word, δєισιδαιμovία, used by Paul, which is derived from two words, one meaning timid, and the other, malevolent spirit.

It is a world privilege that in December, in this year of grace 1920, we are celebrating the Tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers on the shores of New England. The study of history in the past has been too much from a material standpoint.

Every sincere student of Christian Science eventually becomes somewhat of an etymologist; that is to say, he becomes interested in the history and original meaning of certain words, if not of all words, because he has discovered that such study helps in many instances to bring out the deep spiritual significance of much that might otherwise be passed over as obscure or unimportant, both in the Bible and in Science and Health. As the habit of critical analysis of words thus develops, one of the first conclusions that thrusts itself upon the student is that the tendency of common usage is to limit, in some instances to such an extent that the broad and varied application of a word or phrase is all but lost.

One of the most striking points wherein Christianity differed from Judaism was in its missionary enterprise. Judaism was essentially exclusive, and although all through the Old Testament history there are to be found men of large vision who saw something of the universality of salvation, the whole tendency of Judaism was to divide the world into two parts, the chosen people and "the nations.

From earliest childhood, perhaps, the words, "Thy kingdom come," have been familiar to all, and each for himself has conceived their meaning. To one, possibly, they merely speak for a hazy abstraction; another may interpret the coming of the kingdom as some magical, spectacular appearing from the sky, or so-called heaven, of a king on a golden throne; to yet another the words denote an undefined aspiration for the time when every one shall be good; and so on, through countless interpretations.

The man who has learned to some degree the true meaning of universal law rejoices to-day in the evidence of the inquiry of all peoples and nations into this great and unbounded subject. The need for universal law is seen internationally; the presence of such a law is the next vision the earnest seekers are bound to behold, and will simply mean the transformation in thinking from a human basis to the spiritual.

Consequent upon the belief in a finite beginning is the belief in a finite end. That which supposedly begins goes through a period of development and progress until it reaches maturity, the height of its growth.