Article May 23, 1914 Issue

The right note was struck in the editorial of a recent issue,...

Clinton B. Burgess

Erie (Pa.) Herald

The right note was struck in the editorial of a recent issue, entitled "The Glad Smile," and it will doubtless have the effect of spreading the contagion of cheerfulness broadcast in our city. Its statement, however, that Christian Scientists have taught the cultivation of cheerfulness by will-power, needs revision, for one who uses the human will-power to produce that or any other effect in himself or others, cannot truthfully call himself a Christian Scientist.

The true artist or musician does not paint or compose by will-power, but from the impulsion of an idea within him that demands expression; and for the same reason the Christian Scientist does not radiate good cheer because he purposes and undertakes to do so, but because he must. It is because his consciousness is filled and illumined with the most hopeful, helpful, cheering idea the human mind is capable of grasping; namely, that on the side of good, of love, of right, of health and happiness, is all the power and law and reality that exist; that evil is powerless where the omnipotence and omnipresence of God is understood and acknowledged; and that as the falsity of evil's claim to power, life, and reality is exposed, it is bound to shrink and shrivel like a mist before the blaze of day into its native nothingness. It is because he understands and is daily proving the grand culmination of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."

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