Editorial January 29, 1903 Issue

The Ministry of Lay Preaching

Editor

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.

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