Editorials

AS the result of custom, education, tradition, men are apt, unthinkingly, to take many things as they find them, until they begin to reach out for the actual significance of thoughts and actions which have so largely shaped their lives. Human memories, often superstitious and sentimental, the desire to gratify and to be gratified, what flimsy and transient structures they build, how little it takes to strip them of their interest and their joy! Yet to many the festival of Christmas has meant little more than this, accompanied often by a great weariness, that materiality should make such heavy demands upon their exchequer and their time.

IN a world where men believe in the reality of matter and evil; where matter is regarded as real substance to be sought after and accumulated, and evil as something which, from its apparent universality, cannot be avoided, Christliness is often looked upon as a state of consciousness well nigh impossible of realization. For Christliness is a mental state in which love, goodness, truthfulness, honesty, and purity reign.

THE natural desire of mankind is to express some measure of attainment, whether it be an ambition no higher than that of happy human relations, or the competent carrying out of an allotted task. The limits which men place upon their achievements are sometimes evidenced in an unwillingness to take the first essential step; sometimes, when confronted with difficulties and delays, in an inability to persevere.

PAUL writes in his epistle to the Romans, "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. " Our debt to our brother, then, is to love him truly, sincerely, unselfishly; and that involves seeing him as he really is, the reflection of God, infinite good.

ON page 242 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy writes, "Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom.

It may be correctly said that "the scientific statement of being," found on page 468 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, epitomizes the fundamental teachings of Christian Science. The declarations of Truth and denials of error included in that statement reveal the basic facts of being as they are set forth in the Christian Science textbook.

In summing up that which had been accomplished by the greatest spiritual reformer the world had ever known, Paul wrote to the Ephesians: "But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one.

It was in the year 1866 that Mary Baker Eddy discovered Christian Science and the art of healing practiced by Christ Jesus. Mrs.

THE first quality of the Christ which John the Baptist heralded as expressing the divine nature, was grace. Because the Light had come into the world, this manifestation of radiance and gentleness was to reveal itself to men as their own true being.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE teaches that the only real universe is spiritual and consists of ideas and not of material things. The belief that the universe is material and that it has been evolved materially is seen, in the light of Christian Science, to be a fallacy.