Editorial December 7, 1912 Issue

SAVING THE SLUMS

John B. Willis

A student of social conditions in London has recently called attention to the startling fact that, according to the reports of Christian workers among the poor, when a certain level of destitution has been reached the situation seems to become quite hopeless, and from this he argues rightly that Christian thought should awaken to the fact that the gross violation of economic law is largely responsible for these conditions. The persistence of a degrading want, despite our wonderful material progress and the multiplication of means for the cheap production of creature comforts, presents a problem which lies heavily upon the heart of every true lover of men. The false doctrine that the pitiful conditions of the poor are inevitable, that nature's supply is unequal to the demand, and that it is no use trying to better things,—all this has conduced to tolerant indifference where there should have been that righteous enthusiasm which would beget intelligent effort to bring about a more just distribution of the abundance for all which nature has provided.

That Christian workers should find this state of human want and wo irresponsive to love and spiritual appeal, and turn away from it with a sense of its utter hopelessness, discloses a yet more serious fact, however; namely, the loss of that power over evil and its outcome which Christ Jesus promised to all true believers. The conditions of the abject poor in the first century were no doubt as "hopeless" to human sense as they are today, and yet it was from just these, in large part, that the early church was gathered. The slaves and outcasts of society were reached and regenerated by that healing apprehension of Truth which the Christians of the early church acquired, and which is being regained and demonstrated in an inspiring degree through Christian Science today.

The Truth and Love that won the Magdalen, that raised up the sick and dying, and that brought freedom to those possessed of devils, would prove quite as effective in this century as in the first, and we all know it. Nevertheless there are those who inveigh against Christian Science because of the emphasis it lays upon physical healing in demonstration of the presence of the saving Christ, though they would concede that the overcoming of sickness and sin is the prime requisite for the solution of the slum problem. It was a very daring thing for Mrs. Eddy to say to the Christian world that the occasion for human discouragement is not the condition of the victims of poverty and disease, but rather the condition of so-called Christian thought, its practical denial of the efficacy of faith in the Word of God. Her declaration was, however, no less true than telling, and when in the illumination and inspiration of her conviction she demonstrated the presence of Christ, Truth, as able to heal the sick now, she kindled anew for all mankind the sin-consuming fires of true Christianity.

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