Article December 26, 1908 Issue

AN ADDED RESPONSIBILITY

HELEN ANDREWS NIXON.

It is very clear that each blessing brings added responsibility, and not a release from work. To undertake new tasks joyfully as enlarged opportunities, is to make steady gain. Our Leader's request that "every Christian Scientist ... subscribe for and read our daily newspaper" (Sentinel, Nov. 21) is a call to a higher privilege, and the significance of this request is gradually assuming more and more definite proportions to my mind. The first conspicuous effect of this wonderful gift to ourselves and to the world has been to lift one's eyes to an horizon far beyond one's own door-step. The call to help in the world's thinking is no longer something that can pass unheeded, it is an imperative duty. Things we did not like to look at nor think of, problems we did not feel able to cope with, must now be faced manfully, and correct thinking concerning the world's doings cultivated and maintained.

We shall read in one of two ways: either in a desultory manner, falling into acquiescence with the material sense testimony, forgetting that "God is on the field, when He is most invisible;" or we shall open our daily paper with a sincere prayer that by our perusal of it we may lessen the seeming power of evil and strengthen our own confidence, and the confidence of the world, in the actuality of the ever-operative law of God, good. In the work of reading rightly the newspaper each Christian Scientist will have at least one who comes daily for treatment. Look at the task set before us: systematically and intelligently to "aid in the ejection of error" (Science and Health, p. 97). Prognostications of all kinds, whether war or weather forecasts, based on calculations and experiences wherein divine Principle has not been recognized, we must weigh scientifically. Thereby many "signs" shall "fail." Great is the opportunity, and may we solemnly and joyfully awake to it!

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