Articles

" TO work is to pray," ran the old Latin proverb, but it took Christianity to turn it from a precept into practice. The men who governed the world before the Christian era were commonly mighty hunters before the Lord, and though they might be first-rate fighters of men in war, they were by no means first-rate fishers of men in peace.

PROBABLY no people as a class feel so sure of their ground as do those who apply the physical sciences to earn their daily bread. Whether this application be in the laboratory or in the factory, on the farm or on the ocean, by the learned student or by the simple artisan, with intricate apparatus or with none at all, is of no moment.

A new philosophy invariably produces a new era in literature. In content and in form the new type of literary production is usually so radically different from the established order of things that the innovation is greeted with scathing reviews whenever it makes its appearance in the world of letters.

All believers in the teachings of Jesus the Christ are not only devoted to the idea of one God, as contradistinguished from the heathen belief in "gods many," but they unite, in language, at least, in attributing to Him the qualities of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If some of the Christian sects do not more than formally ascribe to God the possession of these attributes, it is not because of any misunderstanding of the meaning of the words which characterize them, but because of a failure, which up to forty years ago was practically universal, to follow the well-recognized definitions of those words to the points to which they logically and inevitably lead.

It has been said that Atlas never could have carried the world had he fixed his thought on the size of it. So, likewise, the secret of spiritual success lies in having only the spiritual goal before us, permitting no fear or doubt to find lodgment in our thought and being positive in the consciousness of the power and wisdom of infinite Mind.

" For some reason best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim—they have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural, in Genesis 1: 26, 'And Elohim said, Let us make man.

In reading the story of David the careful student cannot fail to be impressed by the significant fact that David was at home, engaged in caring for his father's sheep, when the call came to him to go to wider fields of usefulness. No work could have been more humble or apparently farther removed from all opportunity for active aggression against the enemies of his people, and a lad of even less mettle than David possessed might with seeming justice have rebelled when his brethren started out for the battle without him.

Has material medicine satisfactorily answered the age old query, How shall the sick be healed? Confronted by the problem of disease and its cure, men have turned to matter, to drugs, to "other gods;" but have these solved the problem? Apparently not, since there is more disease to-day, or rather there are more names for diseases, than ever before in the world's history. The Christian Scientist has no quarrel with the physician but Christian Science, as a system of healing disease.

It goes without saying that the earliest manifestation of the acceptance of Christian Science is usually seen in a desire to learn the contents and meaning of the sacred Scriptures. This instinct—if we may call it so— may be a new one, or it may be an old desire rekindled and stimulated by the addition of fresh objects to the student's quest.

One of the things demanded of Christian Scientists is that they shall "maintain law and order" (Science and Health, p. 97).