Article June 30, 1917 Issue

The Christian Science Monitor

HUGH J. BARNES

Some few years ago it was my joy and privilege, while staying in Boston, to get the Monitor daily at the newsstand, fresh from the presses. I learned to love and appreciate its clean message of good news, and also to grasp something of its universality, for many times there were interesting items regarding my home country, Australia, which proved very comforting to me while in the midst of the ways and customs of a different clime. Upon returning to my native land I found to my surprise that comparatively few realized the blessing to be had from a daily reading of this newspaper.

The problem with many seems to be this: The Monitor is sent to Australia in quantities of from ten to twenty issues in one mail, and according to mortal sense of time the papers are some weeks old when they reach there. As the first desire of the senses is for the latest news, it seems well-nigh impossible to read, together with local dailies, the Monitors somewhat in order of date before the next batch comes along. It is therefore claimed, according to sense-testimony, that there is insufficient time to read them properly, and on occasions I have seen them untouched until the pile has become so large that the possibility of their performing the important work with which they are charged seemed to become less and less hopeful, and eventually error would argue the uselessness of attempting to read them at all. In this way the testimony of the senses would tend to hinder the work of the literature all the time. These and many other suggestions were encountered by the writer, and on one or two occasions through a seeming combination of circumstances he was entirely cut off from a regular supply of the Monitor, until he fully realized that it was the subtlety of error trying to hinder the good already experienced.

In thinking the matter over I could see that it was possible to read the issues systematically, and so determined to arrange them upon arrival in their consecutive order, and, beginning with the earliest date, read one each day, as well as the local daily, sometimes reading little and sometimes more, as the opportunities of the day offered. And so, without the belief of time, and consequently with no sense of confusion or hurry, I daily find ample food for thought and direction of thought on many questions, world wide in scope and interest, which are by no means settled when the paper reached its readers; that is, when thought opens the pages of the Monitor to receive the message.

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