Editorial January 25, 1913 Issue

PRECEPT AND PRACTISE

Archibald McLellan

Recently the time seemed opportune to refer in these columns to the support which should be accorded the newspaper and magazines which Mrs. Eddy established as the official publications of the Christian Science movement, attention being specially directed to a request which our Leader had made in November, 1908, in behalf of The Christian Science Monitor. Perhaps this request had not heretofore been seen by many who have become Christian Scientists during the past four years; perhaps others had forgotten it. Still others, even with Mrs. Eddy's request before them, were not awake to the possibilities for good through the circulation of a clean and wholesome newspaper. That the Monitor is proving to be the leaven which Mrs. Eddy intended it should be in the newspaper world, is proved by the favorable comment it has received from newspaper men in all sections, and there can be no doubt that its usefulness in this way will be greatly broadened as its circulation is increased. It is gratifying, therefore, to find, through letters which have since been received at this office, that many Sentinel readers were grateful for having had their attention called to Mrs. Eddy's request, and one of them gives such apt expression to this gratitude that we take pleasure in sharing it, having been accorded the necessary permission by the writer. The letter is as follows:—

"I wish to thank you for the merited yet unwitting rebuke for me, contained in your editorial concerning the Monitor, 'Blessing and Blessed,' in the Sentinel of Dec. 28, 1912, and I am glad to make slight amends at this time by enclosing my check for a year's subscription to the Monitor.

"For years I was engaged in the newspaper business, either as department manager, general manager, or publisher of one or another metropolitan daily newspaper, and had long recognized the influence for good that a newspaper might exercise such as Mrs. Eddy proposed when she offered to the public a daily publication that should 'injure no man, but ... bless all mankind;' though, in common with publishers generally, I lacked the courage to launch such a publication. Although I was one of the first to welcome and subscribe to the Monitor, and long took keen delight in perusing its beautiful columns of clean, wholesome reading matter, yet after two years error stealthily crept in, and finally I persuaded myself that, what with the Journal, the Sentinel, the Monitor, and the daily Lesson, I was surfeited with Christian Science literature, having no sufficient time for the local newspapers and other desirable reading matter.