Articles

IT has been a novel spectacle to the world to see a woman in a position of leadership in a great religious movement. Through the centuries now and again some man has risen who has led a religious reform or added to the sum of spiritual understanding by emphasizing a phase of truth that had hitherto been neglected.

Character is the flower of manhood; it is the perfect conformity of the will of man to the will of God, the coincidence in human experience of Principle and practice. Character alone is undying.

WHEN Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science, the revelation included far more than merely finding out for herself how Christ Jesus healed the sick: it also embraced the idea that the kingdom of heaven would be appreciably advanced on earth by teaching others how this is done.

THROUGH the conscientious and consecrated study of the teachings of Christian Science, that wonderful revelation which has come to the world through Mrs. Eddy, a deep moral and religious change takes place in human consciousness, an unparalleled Christianly ethical uplift, for consciousness is led out of the bondage of material thinking upward into the liberty of life in Spirit.

THE true and therefore practical Christian religion makes its appeal to our highest reason, ideals, sentiments, hopes, aspirations, faith, incentives, emotions. If it made its appeal to our reason only, it would be as bare and barren as an empty eggshell.

THE discouraged Scientist, if he rises sufficiently from his discouragement to go to work, is liable to follow the same beaten path, forgetting that he may have mistaken his way and be quite on the wrong road; for to learn a rule to the point of mental acceptance and then correctly to apply that rule, requires an individual effort not found on the printed page. A pupil was once sent to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem in solid geometry.

OPENING a book recently, the work of a friend, a passage descriptive of the manner in which cowboy ponies are taught to stand still when the reins are thrown over their heads, was read with interest, for it brought at once to mind the popular belief in limitation, and how powerfully this false belief seems to operate so long as it remains a concept of the mortal mind. In the instance referred to, the horse, having been taught to believe that the reins in that position positively circumscribe his movements, accepts the dictum and makes no effort to shake off the illusion; indeed, were he abandoned in such a predicament he might even starve before he learned the truth about his situation.

IT would scarcely be possible to lay down the law of spiritual causation in plainer or more unmistakable terms than in the following Scripture words from the second chapter of Genesis: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. " Thought precedes action.

AMONG the various problems that confront Christian Scientists at the present stage of progress, that of church government is an important one. It is a problem that concerns us both individually and collectively; individually in that the schooling we receive from participation in the activities of church work contributes to our spiritual growth; collectively in that it affords us the means of presenting a united front and concentrated effort against the common enemy,—the belief in a power opposed to God, good.

The tendencies to revolt against restraint are to be observed everywhere. Throughout what is sometimes superficially classified as inanimate nature, these tendencies are often accompanied by tremendous exhibitions of energy, but they are all accompanied by counterchecks whose opposing tendencies maintain the necessary equipoise.