It is nineteen hundred years since the Christian era dawned. The Christ appeared as man upon the world's arena, reversing all human laws, ways, and means, establishing a new code for human government, teaching it in the clearest, most unmistakable language, and illustrating it in his own life and works. That code was Love—unselfish, self-sacrificing Love.

So far above the apprehension of the majority of his hearers was it, that it aroused the bitterest antagonism, not only in the world secular, but the religious authority of that day, and its following went far beyond the world—so-called—in the condemnation of the new teacher and his strange, and to them blasphemous, teaching.

The ideal of the good, the true, and the beautiful, his own consciousness, he could not impart to others. He could only give to each one who received him, the power to become a son of God, through the realization of the same perfect ideal. Striving with purest, most self-sacrificing, patient love, to reveal God to man as Life, Truth, and Love; and man to himself as the offspring of this one true God, capable of fulfilling the perfect law of Love—of Good—because it was his true and only Life.

Looking back through the long vista of nineteen centuries, we see how this perfect ideal has been slowly working its way into human consciousness, in men and nations. Or better, how it has been working outwardly from man's innermost thought. Following the line of Light and of Life that runs in golden gleams from then to now, we see—from the awful tragedy of Calvary, and the subsequent demonstration of Life as supreme over death—Love proving itself superior to even the most cruel manifestations of hate; blessing mortals even in their fierce, strenuous enmity against the benefactor and the blessings he gave; Truth establishing its own eternal laws, despite the angry protests of error; the growing ideal of the one altogether lovely, the manifestation of that ideal, the man, Christ Jesus.

With the Pentecostal baptism, the divine consciousness wrought wonders in and among men, the same Life and Love and Truth manifesting itself in deeds of power and lives willingly sacrificed to the high Ideal that had come, to be sooner or later realized upon earth.

There are many names deeply graven on the tablets of fame. Not a century has passed that has not been illumined by heroes animated by this pure and high ideal, who have helped to lift the standard of men and nations higher. And uncounted hosts who are all unknown to fame on earth, "whose names are written in Heaven," "of whom the world was not worthy," have received the perfect ideal and blessed the world that has not known or honored them.

Through these individual lights along the often fearful darkness of the long vista of the added years, the consciousness of nations has been quickened into life. Hegel, in his "Philosophy of History," calls it growth in "Self-Conscious Freedom of Spirit." The pure ideal of man as the Son of God—all men the offspring of Spirit—of God, the Father—manifesting this God—good, pure and perfect Life, was an ever-growing consciousness of good that would make man more and more a law unto himself. In this "self conscious freedom of spirit," the law or life of liberty has grown into a high realization of itself, especially in this, our own America "sweet Land of Liberty," where the true law of liberty has not only been proclaimed in and by the fundamental law, the constitution of these United States, but the law of the Spirit of Life, as Love and Truth has been here re-discovered, as the true law or Life of man individually and collectively.

Never was this principle declared, as the absolute rule for the government of a nation, "that all men are created free and equal," until the Declaration of Independence was given to the world. Yet even then its authors were holding their fellow-men in slavery, and well we know the awful conflict that was necessary to set free the slaves of this free nation.

The question is certainly a pregnant one: "Are we pagan, or Christian?" Never in the history of the world has the ideal, Christ Jesus, been so exalted, revered, adored, and longed for as to-day. That the ideal is not nationally realized we grant, but in truly "self-conscious freedom of Spirit;" in truly realizing the universal freedom of man as a Son of God; Seein and following with intense earnestness and practical desire to reach the ideal; in the realization of the Truth of Being, in being and doing right; being practically Christian, in thought, word, and deed; there are multitudes of earth-born, in ever-growing numbers, proving themselves Christian.

Whatever uncovers the error in practice, showing how far short of the ideal we as a nation are, will aid in the destruction of error, for each individual who lifts his own individual standard higher, will help to raise the national standard to a higher plane of thought and action. Is there not a grave responsibility with every individual of this nation to do this? The forces of evil seem in fearful league as ever "against the Lord, and against his Christ."

It is much to have a high ideal. It is more and better to work up to it with constant faithfulness. Love is as diametrically opposite to selfishness and greed, as it was nineteen hundred years ago; Truth is the very antipodes of error; Life cannot know death, or anything that leads to it; hence if we are to reach the ideal of the perfect life on earth it must be in the footsteps of him who overcame all human error with divine Truth, Life, and Love: healing the sick, raising the dead in trespasses and sins, cleansing the leper, casting out demons.

In the World's Congress of Religions the most glorious manifestation of spiritual progress the world has ever given to the world, was heralded, when all the religions of the world, including those of so-called heathen, pagan, infidel nations, with all the leading sects of Christendom, met with fraternal greetings and proclaimed the great principle of the "Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of man," as the one true platform upon which all could meet and love each other.

That the nations there represented, have not yet reached the practical application of this glorious perfect principle, only goes to prove how the glorious ideal of men and nations goes before them with radiant light, calling on the great and good of earth to follow it despite all fears, doubts, difficulties, and seeming disasters, knowing that the goal can and will be reached by each one who is faithful to it.

Thus through individual faithfulness to Principle, Life, Truth, Love, in every clime, on every continent, in every age,—the grand ameliorative work has gone on, and to-day we can stand on a glorious height in the world's history and see how all the revered leaders, through whom the radiant "Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," has shone forth, have helped onward the blessed consummation we behold at this pregnant hour.

Even to name those that are best known would take page upon page. Antediluvians, prophets, historians, philosophers, poets, artists, princes and peasants, apostles, popes, and pensioners; never a heart, however lofty or lowly, yielded in self-sacrificing love to the one high and perfect ideal, that has not added its iota to the glorious consummation we see now unfolding to us, as we turn from the retrospective soul-satisfying view, to gaze enraptured on the Promised Land, were "nation will no more war against nation," where all men will truly love each other. because each will be truly lovable, fully manifested as the offspring of Love.

This one Life, or unity of Principle, being the only basis upon which practical realization of liberty, equality, and fraternity can be successfully demonstrated, the immense practical importance of the re-discovery of the spiritual law, which Jesus proclaimed and applied in the most practical way possible, in destroying everything contrary to the perfect harmony of man, as the Science of Christ, or Christian Science, can in a measure be seen.

The ideal of man as the veritable son of God, and of the earth as the areana upon which this ideal is to be brought into visible, tangible presence, because man is here and now spiritual and immortal, is the ideal that is "taught, illustrated, and demonstrated," in the words—oral and written—of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

The practical application of this spiritual law, if spiritually understood and scientifically applied, will enable man to establish the Kingdom of Heaven, which has many synonyms, the Kingdom of God or of Good, the Kingdom of Christ, of Truth, of Love, of Peace, so long prayed for on earth.

Through this teaching man is now doing this, and proving himself to be the man made in the "image and likeness of God," to whom his Heavenly Father gave in the beginning dominion over all the earth.

Knowing Christ Jesus as his elder brother, he is able to obey his commands, and to do in some measure the works he did, making love the law of his daily life, and proving that man and men—all men—can fulfil the heavenly law of Life.—Dayton (O.) Herald.