Article April 1, 1911 Issue

A HEALED NEWSPAPER

HENRIETTA A. FIELD.

One morning the writer sat listening to the conversation of two gentlemen regarding The Christian Science Monitor, when these words fell on the ear: "The Monitor, you see, is a healed newspaper." Healed lives and limbs, healed hearts and homes were a common experience, but a healed newspaper was certainly a novel phase of Christian Science achievement. We had taken the Monitor from its first issue, had read it, recognized its great value, passed it on to others, and felt from the beginning that it was a wonderful demonstration; but those two words had given a strikingly new conception of its character and mission. With thought quickened and interest awakened, I watched during the following days of sojourn near its home for a fuller development of this idea.

A closer acquaintance soon revealed the strong similarity between a healed paper and a healed life, and as I followed the working of truth through the every-day experiences of a newspaper office it became evident that "there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." The same spirit of love and wisdom which gave the Decalogue to Moses has its prohibitions for the man with quill and scissors, and the healing work begins with the elimination of a vast amount of material that the ordinary editor looks upon as his stock in trade. How carefully this eliminatory work is done, the reader, although a Christian Scientist, scarce can realize, nor will he appreciate how great a "manifestation of the Spirit" it may require to avoid the rehearsal of error in all its varied phases of crime, pestilence, and disaster, with their accompanying expressions of human pity, fear, and gloom.

To be sure, items regarding sickness, death, and trouble are noted, when of general interest and importance, but these must not become exaggerated mental pictures of sin or suffering. Crime in its multiplied forms is absolutely excluded, except as its mention may become a useful warning to the ignorant or thoughtless. On the other hand, the healed newspaper can have no "swept and garnished" but empty pages. With positive good must its columns be filled, and so whatsoever things are honest, just, pure, and of good report, the noble deeds, the legitimate activities, the healthful pleasures, the acts of virtue and of praise,—these are the fruits of Spirit garnered up for the cager throngs to "think on" day by day.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT