Article January 7, 1911 Issue

THE LECTURES

with contributions from Clement Carpenter Gatley, Robert Wharton Russell, Laura Lathrop, Frank T. Caughey, Force Parker

Bicknell Young delivered a lecture on "Christian Science" at the Hove Town Hall on Friday evening, Nov. 4. The speaker was introduced by Clement Carpenter Gatley, Esq., M.A., LL.D., B.C.L., barrister-at-law, who spoke in part as follows,—

We have assembled here tonight to listen to a lecture on Christian Science, a subject which, while vitally interesting to some of us, is somewhat new to others who are present. Among the latter class I may place myself. I am not a Christian Scientist; I know but little of the system of faith about which we are to learn something this evening. But this is one of the reasons of my presence here.

All systems of faith are striving for the same ideal—to honor the great creator. They teach their members to do so by setting before them a certain course of conduct. The Roman citizen found a religious ideal in the three great precepts of the civil law: "to live honestly, to harm nobody, and to give every man his due;" the Christian in the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount. Just as I think that prayer is something more than words—rather an intense soul-question or soul-aspiration, so I think that religion is something more than a mere set of forms or dogmata. The word is derived from the Latin religare, "to bind back," and means literally a binding back of mankind to the Spirit of the great creator. Whatever be the form, that is the spiritual idea which underlies all the great systems of faith. It is interesting to know that our late illustrious laureate, Alfred Tennyson, who urged men to cling to faith, held the same view when he expressed the thought that, beyond the forms of faith, although "the essential feelings of religion subsist in the utmost diversity of form, different form does not always imply any difference of real faith."

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