Editorial May 2, 1914 Issue

Job and Others

John B. Willis

The world of human sense is the scene of continuous struggle. With the poor it is the fight for existence, while many of those who have abundance are the slaves of that lust for more which generates the frenzies of finance. They have entered the mad race for wealth as the guaranty of luxury and power. Add the disharmony of many homes, churches, and other social institutions, the strife for political preferment, the contentions over policies in legislative halls, the litigations which crowd the dockets of our courts, and one is tempted to conclude that there would be no peace either to the well-doing or the wicked, even though insurrections, revolutions, and international wars were at an end. When, moreover, we remember the unnumbered assaults of disease to which the young and the old, the rich and the poor, are alike subject, it is made apparent that the lot of those subject to these false material beliefs is cast in the mold of conflict.

And yet all these occasions of human unrest sink into relative insignificance in the presence of another struggle, namely, that of Job, the struggle for light upon the human problem, to escape the confusions and contradictions of experience and of much religious teaching. It is an effort to find a rational interpretation of the ways of God to men.

The coming of Christian Science is largely responsible for this turmoil of thought which is afraid lest it lose something of value, while beginning to rejoice in a new point of view which is recognized as revolutionary. In this transitional state the feeling often obtains that it is impossible to be sure of anything. Goaded by the fear of want or of the loss of good standing in the old paths, men are impelled to resist that skepticism which is the beginning of faith; and feeling in turn how discreditable this is, they are made utterly miserable.

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