Good citizenship is fundamentally simple. The training for it is in the home, where fellowship in service may be ideally learned. The teaching regarding it which is most satisfactory may be found in the words of Jesus, "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister." The ideal for life which makes most trouble is the common reversal of this which Jesus reprehended. "The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them," he said. To-day men seek to boss or master others, but for whose benefit? Always for the advantage of the man who has control. So the motto of the undesirable citizen, or of the selfish one in the home, is something like this, "Don't do good, but get good from others." This reverses the Christian ideal for life explained by the Master, who said of himself, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." In the ideal home, or the ideal State, every member thereof has some unique capacity for service, some ability to be useful and minister to the welfare of all. If each one proffers his unique service, it means that the whole work necessary for the well-being of the community is easily completed; each man bears his own burden, and is rewarded by "the joy of the working."

There is a passage in that modern morality play, "The Servant in the House," which always thrills the observer. A working man whose life has been embittered by his resentment against injustice, whose hatred of other men who is vitriolic, whose religion is a form of socialism, which he defines as the grouping of some men in antagonism to the rest of mankind, meets for the first time in his life a man who is an actual Christian. As the true ideal of fellowship in service is unfolded in the conversation, the simple truth comes as a revelation to the poor man who had been living in the hell of hatred. His face lights up as the glory of comradeship dawns upon his thought. He sees that his despised work has a place in the great whole of human good, and the innate dignity and value of the individual man becomes clear to him. Immediately he is inspired with good will. He sees how the labor of others is building as it were a temple, and if some are working in high places fashioning what is beautiful, for love's sake, then he, too, must be at work for love's sake, even though all he can do is to dig sewers. Some one must do this service for the common welfare, and he sees how service brings him into the brotherhood of man. From that moment he is a citizen to be desired in any community. When this teaching, the teaching of Christian Science, is universally understood, then good citizenship will be universal, because the love that "thinketh no evil" will everywhere prevail, and men will "love as brethren, ... not rendering evil for evil. ... but contrariwise blessing."

But in what practical way is this movement able to assist those who at the present time are trying to better human conditions? It may be said in reply that all the practical results of Christian Science demonstration, as for instance the restoration of the insane, the reform of the intemperate, or the recovery of the sick, may be measured in terms of good citizenship. When individuals are incompetent for usefulness through illness or error, it generally means that others must be withdrawn from service to care for them; and that the efficiency of a circle of friends is limited to some degree by their anxiety or grief. When therefore the distressed individual is liberated from disease, vice, intemperance, drug-intoxication, insanity, or whatever his defect may be, it is easy to see that the efficiency of many is increased. They can be more serviceable in working for the welfare of the whole body-politic.

If we were to examine the conditions in a home where, there is an invalid mother, we might see that the communal welfare was affected to an appreciable degree by the necessary maternal neglect of the children. If it were in a home of wealth, they would be under the care of the many strangers employed for service, without the compensation of the mother's tenderness; if it were in the home of a working man, then upon the children themselves would be laid the burden of premature responsibility. In either case the rounded development of the growing citizens would be impossible; there would be a certain incompleteness of opportunity, and as a consequence deep-lying defects of character. Consider, then, the practical result of the ministry of Christian Science in the many cases where healing has been brought to those secluded from their proper work in life by long-continued invalidism. The healing itself is merely the sign of a change from despair and sorrow to the joy of living, and the acceptance of God's love as law is the basis of the change for the better. How much better fitted, then, is the restored invalid for the duties of motherhood, from the fact that she can govern her children from the standpoint of divine law and teach them that intelligent obedience to the universal divine Principle which can make them citizens of the world,—not cosmopolitan merely, but brotherly-minded to all.

Then there is a common error which at times separates men from use in a community as well as from service in the home. Some unspoken bitterness, some latent unhappiness, some sense of loneliness or despair, or it may be mere recklessness, induces men to put themselves under the influence of stimulants, strong liquors and stupefying drugs. The toxic effects of these preparations become gradually manifest. The user of them becomes less efficient, then unreliable, unreasonable, even brutal. If he has a home, he wreeks it. If he has a service to do for others, he fails in it and has to be superseded. His condition is sad, but not for himself alone; there is the circle of friends to whom his case is a problem. The efforts expended in helping him are enough to start ten good men in the way of usefulness. In many cases of intemperance, when friends are in despair. Christian Science has been honestly appealed to by the sufferer, and complete redemption has been wrought out. The man becomes once more a positive influence for good in the community as he does his work. Formerly he was an influence negative, for as the proverb says, "one sinner destroyeth much good." He not only left his own task unperformed, but interfered with the welfare and the happiness as well as the usefulness of others. We can see, then, that the redemption of even one man ministers to good citizenship.

The problem which has been touched upon is a social question as well as an individual problem, and in the interests of good citizenship many efforts are being made to correct the error. At one extreme is the destructive method of warfare, at the other is the redemptive method of healing, and there are all grades of effort between. Time will decide as to the best method, as results appear; and no doubt men who now believe in war, who think that they should hurt, injure, and distress the wrong-doer, may accept the redemptive method.

A single case may be cited of Christian Science work. A man who kept a saloon—it might by some have been termed a gambling den—found his heart wrung with distress over the sickness of his child and the invalidism of his wife. No promise of relief was given him by his doctor, and finally he made his despairing appeal to a Christian Scientist. He declared that he knew he was not worthy to ask for himself "the prayer of faith," but he asked it for the innocent child, and for the woman who he said had always been good. The practitioner responded to his appeal lovingly, and explainde that God is "no respecter of persons" and therefore excludes none who honestly seek for betterment. It is enough to report that healing came to the home, and to the man, and that a new ideal of life was accepted by him. He ended at once the occupation harmful to others, and found work which was positively useful, thus becoming a citizen helpful to others.

In one community, in one year, four saloons were closed by Christian Science healing. Throughout the land there are cases many, not only of the healing of victims of the unwholesome traffic, but of those who believed that their living depended upon catering to the appetites for intoxicating liquors induced in other men. When the change is wrought by healing, there is no bitterness engendered, there is no disaster involved. The better ideal dawns as the light comes, and life is renewed by love as by the power of God.

The Leader of the Christian Science movement has taught by example so many of the offices of the good citizen that it was no wonder the community in which she lately lived bore testimony to the reversal of that old saying quoted by Jesus, "A prophet is not without honor save in his own country, and among his own kin." In her case there was honor given, and there was poignant regret at her removal. She had interested herself in all that made for the common welfare, from the making of good roads to the building of a church; she planned that the little children should have shoes, as well as that the sick should have healing. We may quote her own words, taken from "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 110), "What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!"

The duty of Christian Scientists as to "taking part in national, state, and municipal elections," has recently been editorially discussed in the Sentinel. The propriety of exercising the right of suffrage so as to have some share in the government of the country in this way, seems self-evident. The right act of one man is of importance to all men. John Stuart Mill, writing "On Liberty," said: "The initiation of all wise or noble things comes, and must come, from individuals, generally at first from some one individual. The honor and glory of the average man is, that he is capable of following that initiation; that he can respond internally to wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes open." To say that political conditions are so impure that the Christian workers should keep aloof, is like saying that a man may be so sick that none should go near to help him. The Christian Scientist would feel immediate compassion for a man helpless and sick, and would initiate better conditions for him, beginning with healing. Likewise he may in his community be the initiator of better local conditions. When some one shows the right way, many are ready to walk in it.