OF the many encouraging signs above our political horizon, none is more promising than the part the editorial laity are taking in proclaiming the Gospel in its application to communal affairs. A good specimen of this good and efficient work is found in the following paragraphs taken from the editorial columns of the Cole County (Mo.) Democrat. In its clearness of moral discrimination, its forceful statement of the essential issue, and its loyalty to the Christ ideal, it would be a credit to any pulpit. Christian Science specially emphasizes, as has this writer, the most important fact that the corrective and saving purpose of the Gospel embraces every problem which human experience presents. Truth and Truth alone annuls and eliminates all error, and to bring it into saving relation to every disease and difficulty of human experience, is the great privilege and immediate duty of every professed Christian.

"If there be one thing above all others that the great body of practical working Christians need most to understand at this time, it is the duty resting upon them to measure all public acts by the test of the moral law, and to solve every political problem by the rules of Christian ethics. Wherever sin and crime, injustice and oppression, robbery, peculation, and fraud, may be traced either directly or indirectly to any law or political institution or governmental act, the constituent elements of that government who have not tried to remove the wrong are immediately responsible for it.

"Too many Christians send up their prayers to God while casting their votes for Satan. They may not know how they are voting, but it is their duty to find out. With the means of knowledge readily at hand, ignorance is no excuse. But, whether he arrive at the truth or not, it is certainly the Christian's duty to seek it. There is no higher ideal in this world than that of Christianity. It is the one great gospel consecrated to justice and human love. It is impossible to confine this doctrine in its scope or to set prescribed limits to its application. The moment you attempt to do so the whole system falls worthless to the ground, and enlightened human reason must reject it as a monumental and preposterous fraud.

"Christianity is of universal application, or it is nothing. It cannot be limited to merely individual conduct. The same principle that prevents your robbing your neighbor's corn-crib, must, if it have any logical or moral force at all, likewise prevent any number of men from robbing any number of corn-cribs. And so of all that is enjoyed by the Christian religion. It applies to the many, as well as to the few; to the nation as to the individual; to the whole as to the part. There is not one law for one man and another for ten, another for a hundred, and so on; but there is one glorious Law for all men, whether they be few or many, for the multitude as well as for one.

"In a government like ours, where every man is a piece of the sovereignty and we all have our voices in shaping the national policies, each one is personally and individually responsible for every social or industrial evil that may be traced to a political origin. That social and industrial evils do exist there can be no doubt. Sociologists and economists have shown very clearly that these evils are not due so much to the inherent infirmities of human nature as to the maladjustments of society. When one man can accumulate fifty or a hundred millions in a year, while thousands, equally intelligent, frugal, and industrious can hardly scrape together the barest necessities of life, we know that there is something radically and fatally defective in the political system under which such conditions are possible.

"Unless you try to right this wrong, unless you protest against it and strive to overthrow it, you are personally accountable for it. Think not that you can cast the burden upon society, for society is made up of just such creatures as you, and you are part of it. You may deny that you are your brother's keeper, but you certainly have no right to be your brother's oppressor—and you are his oppressor when you, either actively or passively, yield assent to that which does oppress him.

"The duties and responsibilities here referred to rest upon all alike, whether Christians or not, but none can be held to a more strict accountability than the Christian because he has set up a higher standard and professes higher ideals than do other men. The Christianity that confines itself to the work of inculcating the private virtues merely, while disregarding man's public duties, wholly overlooks one of the two fundamental commandments upon which are said to rest all the law and the prophets, and that is to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.' The religion that limits its operations to the amen corner is of little use in this world, and that which exhausts its benevolence in the fruitless effort to ameliorate the conditions of the victims of injustice, while doing nothing to remove the cause of involuntary poverty, is not much better. What the world really needs is not benevolence but justice. The truest, noblest, holiest charity is that which secures equal rights and opportunities to all men. Without this, pauperism and crime continue to increase, and the centers of the highest civilization will continue, as they are to-day, but festering sores."