Editorial February 3, 1906 Issue

An Open Door

John B. Willis

Christian Science leads to the logical and blessed fulfilment of the gospel assurance that all men may become "kings and priests unto God." It reveals the richer possibilities of an unhampered, individual access to Truth, and emphasizes the thought of the sovereign adequacy of that spiritual understanding to which the humblest may attain. Its text-book is a "Key to the Scriptures;" its teaching an open door to all good. For the sacerdotalism which would limit spiritual privilege in any way or degree, it offers the freedom of the sons of God,—a freedom in which divine Love "satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with goodness."

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes of that "hidden wisdom" through which all may come into possession of this spiritual enrichment. He declares that it is "a divine philosophy" which is "taught to those who are mature enough to receive it a deep divine secret, a revelation to the heart of man by the divine spirit, of things which wholly surpass human knowledge." (Prof. Stevens, Pauline Epistles.)

The terms employed by the apostle in describing the nature and accessibility of our inheritance were of such peculiar significance to the Greek Christians that they suggest a thoughtful selection upon his part. As in ancient Egypt, so in Greece the great body of the people were ever in bondage to a grossly material sense. The traditional history and doings of the gods were accepted by them as matters of fact, and their many religious ceremonies were celebrated in an altogether superstitious way. The priestly class however, as we are told, regarded the popular stories of the gods as mere fictions, and looked behind and beyond the crudities of general belief to the forces and phenomena of nature which the gods in all their activities and contentions but symbolized. Selfish considerations no doubt led the priesthood to consent to the ignorant credulity of the masses, and the authorized teachers were thus far removed from the common people, who thought of them as a highly favored class to whom alone the deeper mysteries of their faith were committed. The fixedness of this relation and the content of the people in a state of ignorance is indicated by the fact that when Socrates, their greatest and wisest teacher, dared to tell them of the folly of their superstitions, those whom he sought to make free pressed the cup of hemlock to his lips.

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