Editorial April 9, 1910 Issue

"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING."

John B. Willis

Not infrequently would-be clever critics take occasion to make Christian Scientists the butt of raillery, if not ridicule, by an apparently legitimate inquiry as to why they should put forth such earnest effort to overcome sin and sickness, if it be true that these things are mere "old wives' fables." "Why not snap one's fingers, so to speak," say they, "and realize the goneness of such foolish fallacies at once?" If Christian Scientists always have the grace and wisdom to make no retort to such sallies, they do well. Usually this is distinctly the best course to pursue, and yet at the right time, and to those who will hear, they have somewhat to say.

Every worthy citizen is interested in the general educational system of his country. It may represent a vast organization, and involve the expenditure of an enormous sum, but usually this money is far more willingly contributed than that for any other communal undertaking. And what is the purpose and end of this huge enterprise? Simply the removal of some form of ignorance, which, as all will allow, is in itself mere nothingness. The displacement of a wrong sense, or no sense, by a right sense, is the sum total accomplished, or to be accomplished, by "all this ado," and yet no one thinks of ridiculing the effort as foolish.

Of all the world's teachers Christ Jesus has been denominated the greatest, and the educational work he inaugurated differs from that of other teachers, only as spirituality differs from mere intellectuality. The redemption of humanity means advance in knowledge, the banishment of humanity nothingness of stupidity and false belief, through the establishment of the rule of the right idea, the somethingness of Truth. So long as falsity is believed to be true, so long will it be potential upon the plane of human sense, though absolute nothingness in itself, and the "ado" which Christian Scientists are making over it, is the "ado" of every professor and teacher in the world, and that over the same thing; for, while ignorance exists with respect to many different things, its nothingness presents no varieties whatever.

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