Editorial December 10, 1904 Issue

A Right Look in the Wrong Place

In speaking of the larger possibilities for good which have come to the church in modern times, a religious leader has recently said,—

"We have no doubt that the conception of God which looks into present phenomena, present events, and present experiences for the revelation of God, is a better incentive to faith than one which looks only or chiefly to a history of past phenomena, past events, and past experiences."

That present observation and experience must take rank over traditions as a basis of thought and determination, no one will question, but Christian Scientists have come to see that a healing and saving concept of God is not to be secured by peering into the phenomena of mortal life, whether past or present. The false sense of one age is equally false with that of every other, and our religious advance is not to be found in the study of present events, but in the demonstration of divine Principle. This idea that salvation is to be secured through the more careful observation and more technical analysis of human conditions is a most pervasive fallacy. In the domain of literature and art it has led to a realism which seems to exult in deformity. while in the field of physics it would honor the microscope rather than the miracle as the key to our spiritual inheritance.

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