Article August 31, 1899 Issue

The "State Papers" of Christian Science

BY CLIFTON L. HILDUM.

Casting the eye over the wide range of our Christian Science literature, we find that the United States is not alone in the possession of a Declaration of Independence, an Emancipation Proclamation, or of a Constitution.

First among our State Papers comes the Declaration of Independence. It is less voluminous, less dazzling in the brilliancy of its rhetorical construction, than the one to which all Americans point with such just pride and with such assurance of the fairness of its provisions—that product of the thought of the great statesman, Thomas Jefferson: but it is more potent. It is older, it is more certain in the results which follow its adoption and maintenance. One need not be a scholar to enable him to comprehend it,—in fact, children of tender years seem often more alive to its true meaning than are those of a larger growth; and it is lisped by the child with far more assurance than that which, in many cases, attends the most scholarly articulation of a collegiate.

Our Declaration is made up of but three words, but what measureless meaning they contain! A meaning as deep and wide and high as space itself.

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