Editorials

SOMETIMES we hear people who have been only a short while in the way of Christian Science express surprise and even disappointment that it has not proved the rose-bordered path they had pictured. Because Christian Scientists as a rule manifest so much of joy and happiness, the outsider is apt to regard them as singularly free from trouble or care, and to the new-found faith the knowledge that there are still trials to be met comes with something of a shock.

It usually takes considerable time and mental effort for the average mortal to let go of the material and personal concept of individuality, and to grasp the spiritual idea presented in Christian Science. Indeed at times it seems as if nothing could bridge the gulf between the old and the new, and yet the Christ-teaching does this very thing.

In all science, law and its demonstration are never divorced. In this inheres its distinction, its usefulness, and its irresistible strength.

RADIANT happiness is a characteristic of Christian Scientists which is often commented upon by people who are perhaps inwardly questioning what there is in the religion taught and lived by Mrs. Eddy that so markedly differentiates its followers from their fellows.

No feature of the Christian Science movement is more unique than its word of testimony. The numbers and the manifest honesty and sincerity of those who witness to its healing truth, are certainly impressive, and especially to those to whom there is thus opened the long-closed door of hope.

Long ago the psalmist asked, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" and throughout all the ages thinkers have been asking and attempting to answer this question. Even philosophy has seen that man cannot be defined in terms of matter, and a well-known authority in this line has said that to the extent one "belongs to matter" he is "the slave of necessity.

It is strikingly significant that precept and practice are closely coupled in the Master's ministry to mankind,— how he "went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. " Having chosen his disciples, Jesus' first care was to instruct them in the new yet old gospel, — the Sermon on the Mount.

St. Paul stated a vital truth when he said that spiritual things must be "spiritually discerned.

In his famous lecture on the conquests of the Saracens, Dr. John Lord focuses attention upon the fact that during the thirteen years in which Mohammed stood not only for pure monotheism but for a kindly, inoffensive life, the recognition and practice of universal brotherhood, he gained only about a score of converts; but when he appealed to the passions of men, assured the faithful of all the delights of a sensual heaven, and invoked the sword as a means of propaganda, he converted all Arabia within eleven years! This unpopularity of a high ideal, and this seeming gain attending the lowering of the ethical standard, is abundantly illustrated in the history of religions.

To every earnest worker in the field of Christian Science there is likely to come not once but many times the question as to its possibilities in meeting promptly and effectually the false claims of evil to place and power. He is a skeptic indeed who today, in the face of unnumbered thousands of testimonies of the healing of "all manner of disease," attempts to refute the assertion that Christian Science, as taught and demonstrated by its adherents, does make whole the sick and the sinning,—the fulfilment to this age of the Master's promise, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.