Editorial August 26, 1916 Issue

A Genuine Revival

Archibald McLellan

OF late years a good deal has been talked and written about the need for a great religious revival. No doubt this need is pressing, but those who write and talk about it simply do not realize that the greatest religious revival of the centuries, since the advent of Christianity, has been in progress for the past fifty years. Just half a century ago Mrs. Eddy discovered the Science of Jesus' teachings, and later she promulgated this Science for the benefit of all mankind. The result of this has been a genuine revival of primitive Christianity, which has enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and rescued them from all manner of disease and sin. Not only has this revival been participated in by those who in their extremity had blindly sought God in an almost helpless way, but also by many who, hopeless and unbelieving, had said in their hearts, "There is no God !"

Not the least valuable lesson of this particular revival has been the marked absence of spectacular propaganda. There has been from the platform and in the literature no studied or frenzied appeal to the emotions, no preaching of eternal damnation, no playing upon the fears of excited or discouraged men and women, no denunciation of persons or classes, no bitter arraignment of other religions. On the contrary, there has been a quiet and confident statement of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, the reality of good, the immortality of man in the image and likeness of God, the divinity of the Christ, the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man.

Not only has this statement of Christianity been made to the ear and eye, but also combining precept with practice, its truth has been demonstrated in the healing of the sick and the reform of the sinful. Jesus said that certain signs should follow them that believe, and that these signs have been manifest in the practice of Christian Science is now too firmly established to be contradicted successfully. Surely this is a revival that is worthy of the name, and one in which all men would willingly join if they but appreciated its far-reaching effects.

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