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Religion and Joyousness
Whenever the Gospel ceases to be good news and glad tidings to all men, it ceases to be the true Gospel. Whenever any messengers of the Gospel so deliver it that it carries gloom and terror into the consciousness of men, they pervert its meaning and weaken its force and value. Any form of religion which is not essentially joyous cannot be the true religion.
It is easy to find in human history a sufficient explanation of the gloom and fear which have become too much associated with religion. Primitive man accepted everything as being what it seemed to be to his physical senses. If the sun seemed to rise in the east and set in the west, he did not stop to question the appearance. His superstitious fancies filled the earth, the water, and the sky with malign and mischievous deities, in order to account for the floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and their like, which seemed constantly to menace him. He could not have done otherwise than mould his deific concepts into frightful mythologies, when he accepted the universe as really being what it appeared to be to physical sense. Devils innumerable were inevitable. And it was inevitable that he should seek to propitiate, by gifts suitable to their supposed traits, the evil powers which seemed to hold his destiny in their capricious and frightening grasp. Thus his religion became of necessity a religion of fear and anxiety.

January 14, 1905 issue
View Issue-
Religion and Joyousness
CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK.
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The Gospel of Giving
ELIZABETH EARL JONES.
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Annual Meeting of the Church in Concord
Irving C. Tomlinson, Josiah E. Dwight, J. Wesley Plummer
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Earnest Givers
William King
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The Lectures
with contributions from Judge Clearwater, Lizzie L. Filbert, R. J. Wilson
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Christian Scientists are not "skeptical as to the existence...
Albert E. Miller
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Christian Scientists, instead of regarding man as an object...
Richard P. Verrall
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Christian Science does not deal with the imagination...
W. S. Morris, Jr.
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Our critic finds fault with the definition of God as given...
James D. Sherwood
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MRS. EDDY TAKES NO PATIENTS
Editor
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Our Leader's Letter to the Concord Church
Mary Baker Eddy
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A Cry in the Wilderness
John B. Willis
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Letters to our Leader
with contributions from H. M. Ferris, Harry E. Sims, Barbara M. Prince, Clarence Arnold
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As my thoughts go back to the time when I believed I...
Carrie Kruses
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If I could express even a small part of my gratitude and...
Theodora Beckwith
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It is more than ten years now since I first learned of...
Fannie L. Sellew
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From childhood, there was nothing I desired or loved...
Magdalena Howser with contributions from Louis H. Jennings
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I first heard, of Christian Science ten or twelve years...
Harry Vance Swope
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Paul said, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your...
Carrie A. McLeod
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About six years ago I was healed of a severe case of...
J. E. Heronemus
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Our Trust
MRS. H. RUTHVEN MC DONALD.
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Notices
with contributions from Stephen A. Chase