Article November 1, 1913 Issue

A few days ago I picked up from my table a little book of...

J. W. Pope

Southern Pines (N. C.) Tourist

A few days ago I picked up from my table a little book of thirty-three pages, entitled "The Law of Kindness." It was put out by the great publishing house of the Christian Scientists. It had lain on my table and shelves for months. I had seen it often and passed it by, but this time I thought I would read it. Now and then thoughts strike deep, and sometimes they seem to come as a sort of challenge to do a thing.

I read this book carefully. I read it again the following day, and then I summed up its contents and attempted a comprehensive study of them. What is Christian Science? What is science? I will not give Mrs. Eddy's definition; I will take Webster's. Science is to know. In a general sense it is knowledge, certain knowledge; the comprehension or understanding of truth or facts by the mind. The science of God must be perfect. To my mind there was incorporated in this little book the very quintessence of science and truth, so far as they are related to our duties to God and man; or to put it in another form, it contained all that is vital in the exposition of the great essentials of religion. Its whole structure was built on love. This was its sublime foundation, the bed-rock on which it rested; and such religion, exemplified in life, we must clothe with the dignity of superiority, of supreme excellence.

To love is Christianity in the practical, in action, in the life. It is religion in the concrete. Love is the great basic principle that should govern all lives. Hate is destructive in all its tendencies. It creates discord in the family, church, community, and state. It blurs every life that holds it. It is the curse of all mankind. I am not a Christian Scientist. I wish I were, in the higher sense of the word, but I may pay homage to a people who have set their faces toward the light, who crave a larger knowledge of spiritual truth, who set their standards high, who place lofty and noble ideals before them and strive to realize them. The world has been degenerating from the spiritual toward the material, substituting a lip service for genuine worship. It has attempted to "serve God without God," and this is the paramount cause of the anarchical conditions that exist today.

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