Article March 19, 1910 Issue

There has been much disposition shown of late by our...

Beacon

There has been much disposition shown of late by our fun-makers and their imitators to make Christian Science the butt of their humor. The writer admits, and not without regret, that he has not achieved Christian Science. We say achieved because we consider the comprehension and application of Christian Science to the daily life something of an achievement; and this apart from the healing feature of the faith. The point we wish to make is that the humorist who finds it necessary, in working out his daily stunt, to play upon the belief of any religious organization, is not only offering insult to a body of earnest and sincere people, but is exposing to public comment the sterility of the soil upon which he depends for his particular product, things to amuse his readers. Though any one Christian organization is not particularly resentful of disparaging things that may be said of other Christian organizations, its members are extremely sensitive to anything reflecting on their own particular organization; and their right to be so is unquestioned.

If there is a feature of American citizenship that should be held inviolate, it is this right to freedom of belief and worship. Happily we have passed the period of physical religious intolerance, and presumably we shall one day achieve that Christian spirit which recognizes all good men as brethren. It would seem that, from the view-point of business common sense, if not from that of maintaining a high plane of regard for the rights of all, the press would lead in a strict observance of such rights, and exclude any trifling or disparaging reference to any religious sect that teaches the Christian religion and the high moral ideals established by its great Founder. No man's religion is a thing to joke about. Most men have a religion of some kind; in some degree they recognize and emulate goodness; and regardless of what that religion is, it is the best he has; it is the sheet-anchor of his life, and gives whatever of moral stability he may possess, whatever of the Christian virtues he may practise, whatever hold upon the immortal side of human life he may have. It is the thing that he lives by, and the life he lives is all he has to die by.

As people grow older, they realize that from the cradle to the grave man needs all the strenghening, all the steadying influences possible to him, to enable him to be all the man, all the woman possible, under the unavoidable conditions of life. It would seem to be logic that a cheerful optimistic religious belief—such, for instance, as Christian Science—would be about the proper antidote for the vexations and harassments of life, but there are many good folk who would be utterly miserable with a cheerful religion, and they too must be protected and respected, and they are also to be congratulated, in that they have a religion which is adapted to their peculiar needs; and it is the multifarious peculiar needs of humanity that make sacred all forms of religious belief and should protect them from jest and scorn, and Christian Science no more, no less than others.

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