Editorial December 17, 1904 Issue

Quality in Living

A Clever critic of western civilization, who writes under the caption, "Letters from a Chinese Official," hews close to the line when he says that instead of thinking of the quality of the life lived, we are ever thinking of the means of living. All students of our time will agree that the life of the many is altogether irrational in view of the fact that thought is focussed upon the endowment and prolongation of life's satisfactions, rather than upon their refinement and spiritualization. The initial impulse of conduct may be, and often is, a desire to reach an ideal goal, but in so far as material things are thought of as conducing to its attainment, the trend is invariably toward absorption in the means, and forgetfulness of the end. How subtly the demands of the body, of social life, and of fashion insinuate themselves upon our attention until, as our critic has said, it becomes wholly subservient, and then the curse upon ignoble living is pronounced,—decadence has began.

In this connection one can but recall the founders of this great American republic. They are sometimes spoken of as narrow, and not altogether lovable in the angularity and austerity of their faith, but all will allow that the quality of their living was very splendid. In the most trying circumstances of poverty and of peril, they succeeded in preserving inviolate a fine, high sense of life's true meaning. Their children have multiplied a thousandfold the means of enriching human experience, but absorption in these means, has tended to render our daily living commonplace and unheroic. Quantity and variety have been gained, but at the expense of quality.

The only remedy for this drift and condition is found in the realization of a truth to which Jesus constantly referred, and which is distinctly emphasized in Christian Science; viz., that spiritual ends are to be achieved by spiritual means, and by these alone. "Spiritualization of thought lets in the light" (Science and Health, p. 407), and the problem of being can be solved in on other way. Our human efforts and material sacrifices may have very much to do with our escape from materiality, but they count not a whit in the demonstration of real being.

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