Articles

Christian Scientists all feel that they owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Eddy for giving them their textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

One of the points upon which practically the entire world agrees and to which there has been admirable adherence in these recent years of strife, is the necessity for taking a firm stand in matters of justice, regardless of the cost. Christian Scientists are grateful in their recognition of this unity of thought and purpose because they can appreciate the underlying inherent truth that prompts such a universal, firm stand.

The fact that Christian Science as a religion offered protection, solace, regeneration, and spiritual enlightenment to the soldier in camp, in the trenches, on the battle field, and in the hospital is evidenced in the testimonies of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual healing given in the Christian Science periodicals and at the Wednesday evening meetings, where grateful acknowledgment is made of the practical availability of Christian Science in its application to the needs of those who turned to it in extremity amid crises of human existence. While it is impossible at the present time to measure the full extent of good accomplished, nevertheless one can read the signs of the times in the reports by pen or voice of the cases of relief from pain, of comfort in affliction, of the healing of sin, and of the illumination of thought experienced by those who faithfully adhered to the teachings of Christian Science.

The ceaseless human activity in a material universe as visualized by Shakespeare was pictured thus:— All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. What the poet expressed in verse Mrs.

Truth comes to each of us in the way we are best able to accept it. It came to me in a strange and remarkable manner, and undoubtedly in the only way I would receive it.

" Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity," Mrs. Eddy writes on page vii of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

The Scriptural allegory in the book of Genesis explains how the concept of evil first appeared to the human mind in the form of a serpent. So subtle is the serpent that it has deluded mankind ever since the beginning of history, and so plausible is its argument that it has deceived even the wise.

When Paul wrote, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind," he was no doubt aware that he was enunciating the operation of the law of divine Principle. The more human experience and human history are reviewed the more is it apparent that nothing short of transformation will suffice to establish a reign of harmony.

The world has been witnessing for almost five years the most tremendous upheaval, perhaps, in its history. Outwardly the eruption assumed the form of a great war in which all the devices of engineering skill, all the resources of modern natural science, were employed; but beneath the surface, and essentially, the struggle which took place during these tragic years was one between truth and error, or good and evil.

No teaching of Christian Science is more distinctive or more significant in its effects than that found in the emphasis which it lays upon demonstrable truth-knowing as the essential factor of Christian faith. In this it presents a great contrast to that very general religious teaching which gives prominence to unquestioning belief as the ground of our salvation, and to an ecstatic state of emotion as the evidence that one is saved or forgiven.