Article November 21, 1901 Issue

Cartoon and Christian Science

Observer

In The Evening Leader

In this free thinking and free speaking country it frequently happens that freedom gives place to license, resulting in actions which the public needs to frown down, since they are amenable to no other law. How frequently since the death of the President the evils of "yellow journalism," the habit of holding up the best men of the land for defamation and contempt, have been referred to by the press in righteous indignation.

This evil is not confined to the political world alone, or those who stand highest in the domain of public affairs, it even enters the domain of religion, and there, too, manifests its malign spirit. While there is a wide field for difference of opinion in matters of religion, and the number of sects and denominations is so great as seemingly to afford every man a church suited to his religious beliefs (should he have any), his attitude toward those who differ from him, ought never to descend to the low level of derision and defamation.

No more untimely exhibition of this sort of abuse has come to our notice in a long time than a page of cartoons in the Sunday issue of one of the New Haven dailies, the Sabbath following the death of Mr. McKinley, a tenderly sorrowful day. Untimely at any time, but more particularly when the hearts of all the people were plunged in sorrow, could anything seem in more execrable taste? On any occasion, and in particular on such an occasion, to hold up a well-established and highly respectable body of Christian people as an object for fun and supposed amusement, seems so utterly out of place as to excite only the most painful sensations. These cartoons were leveled at the Christian Scientists, and we can discover no good reason for what was evidently intended as an insult.

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