Editorial June 13, 1903 Issue

Likeness the Basis of Interpretation

The law that like begets like, on which Christian Science bases its declaration that man, the offspring of Spirit, is wholly spiritual, is attended by another law of kindred deep import; namely, that only like can apprehend like.

This is enunciated by Paul when he says, "they that are after the spirit, do mind the things of the spirit," and by John when he links the realization of our kinship with God, to our perception of the divine perfection. (John, 3 : 2.) We have long since learned that a just estimate of men, the true interpretation of their thought and life, must always be sympathetic. We recognize that a music critic must be a musician, that an unartistic nature cannot express the true values of an artist's ideal or achievement, and for the simple reason that he cannot perceive them. Respecting many other things, the culture and common sense of the world have adjusted themselves to the law that like is apprehended only by like; but in the realm of religious thought it is to be seen that the story of the past is, in large part, a history of man's stupid or unconscious attempt to violate this law. The appeal of the spiritual has always been placed at a disadvantage in view of the pettiness and distortion of that human concept which has undertaken to predetermine the form and order of its presentation.

This tendency to array the things of spirit in the fustian and feathers of human sense has long since become a habit, and humanity has grown so accustomed to the exhibition that when at long intervals some one has awakened to the incongruity and irreverence of the performance, and has risen in protest and appeal, he has been declared heretical and excluded from the synagogue. Religionists have ever been most zealous for the preservation of their idols, and the more uncouth and forbidding the caricature, the more fervid, ofttimes, has been the rally to its defence.

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Likeness the Basis of Interpretation

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