Editorial October 7, 1911 Issue

THE ONE PRESSING NEED

John B. Willis

Few would question that the safety and welfare of the communal life is determined by the ethical status of the people, the reverence shown for a moral order. Remove respect for truth and right, and in so far men are subject to the passions and impulses which make for anarchy and peril. The recognition of this fact is likely to beget a sense of solicitude in the minds of the thoughtful, in view of the further fact that so large a proportion of the people (three fourths, according to one eminent authority) do not attend any church and are not ethically impressed or dominated by the existing Christian order. A part of this majority are moved more or less by fear, a superstitious sense of the divine government, but they are ignorant of the Bible and without spiritual aspiration, and while the desire to preach the gospel "to the poor" is still impelling to much heroic effort, the results are so relatively meager that the skeptical have felt free to speak of Christianity as a failure, and to discuss other ways of solving the human problem.

This condition is deeply impressing not only Christian believers, but humanitarians of every shade of thought. It relates itself so immediately to future human welfare and to the stability of representative government, that men are startled when they think of its possible sequences. Especially are Christian ministers in all Christian lands inquiring why the common people, who once heard the gospel so gladly as to crowd upon the footsteps of the Master and his disciples, can hardly be induced today to listen to its proclamation. The coming of Christian Science at a time in religious history when Christian workers were thus losing their confidence of success, if not their courage of endeavor, has proved to be a no less momentous than interesting event, and in the presence of the unquestioned facts to which reference has been made, it well becomes all Christian Scientists to inquire on what grounds they can expect to gain and hold the attention of this vast body of indifferents.

Christian Scientists cannot appeal to either fear or superstition, since, as Mrs. Eddy has said, "superstition and understanding can never combine." "We should master fear instead of cultivating it" (Science and Health, pp. 288, 197); neither can they encourage or consent to any form of sacerdotalism. Furthermore, they must impose upon men the highest standard of personal rectitude and purity, be intrusively individualistic, in a sense, in demanding that every one shall awaken to the call of Truth and zealously address himself to the working out of his salvation. They must stand for a metaphysical point of view, a spiritual interpretation of nature and life against which the educated beliefs of so-called common sense, the conclusions of reigning material thought, and the dictum of many honored traditions promptly rebel,—and for these reasons Christian Scientists seem even less likely than others, from the human point of view, to reach the ear and rouse the dormant moral sense of the materially minded. What assurance of success, therefore, can the Christian Scientist have? This, and this alone, that he is declaring the truth which was spoken effectively by Christ Jesus and his disciples; that this truth may be, yes, is being demonstrated in the healing of the sick, and that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

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