Article January 25, 1919 Issue

Many are the people in these days whose hearts are filled...

The Christian Science Monitor

Many are the people in these days whose hearts are filled with vague questionings regarding Armageddon. All their years and years of reading of the Scriptures have not enabled them to grasp the metaphysical significance of the great world conflict. They know it to be the greatest war of history, but it is conceded to be a war that is not to be disposed of in the ordinary history book style. More than an international quarrel, the struggle has taken on the nature of a warfare to maintain their faint sense of that divine Principle which has been revealed to men. We say faint, for faint is this sense compared to what the term divine Principle means and includes; but faint as the sense of right may seem to be, it is the strongest power in the world to-day and has brought and held the nations in line for long years that the human sense of freedom and liberty might not be wiped from off the earth.

Christian Science is in the world to-day to answer the questions raised by troublous times. And this Science does not go outside the teachings of the Holy Bible to give its students a reason for the hope that is in them. Their joy that the world is coming on to a higher plane of thinking and demonstration is not misplaced, not a blind ignoring of the horrors of the war, for they know as well as other people the heart-breakings and the agonies, the unavailing prayers and the cruel wrongs, that are part and parcel of the prosecution of a war. Christian Science supplies the vision, however, which discerns the spiritual reality beyond the material unreality, demonstrating here and now that God's universe is not the material and warring one, but has ever known and will ever know the peace that passeth understanding. In this real, spiritual universe, man really lives and moves and has his being. Christian Science teaches the triumph of Truth over error, and no night of discord, be it ever so long, can conceal forever the dawn of the facts of omnipresent divine Mind.

Near the close of the book of Daniel stands this prophecy: "Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand." Here is a distinct promise that whatever trials should come upon the earth, the wise should possess a scientific knowledge which would see them through all material havoc and convulsion of whatever sort. All over the globe to-day there are established Christian Science churches, where on Sundays and on Wednesday evenings the Bible is read, with explanatory passages from Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook. These churches stand as bulwarks of the war of humanity against the common enemy, against all belief in sin, disease, and death, as opposed to Life, Truth, and Love. Instead of personal preachers, interpreting the Bible according as they may have been educated in some branch of religious orthodoxy, the Christian Science church has Readers whose sole duty is to read with understanding the Scriptures and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Their duties are divinely authorized, because such reading of the Word is spoken of several times in the Bible record. The eighth chapter of Nehemiah describes services held by the people of Jerusalem, after the rebuilding of the walls under Nehemiah. Ezra the scribe brought "the book of the law of Moses," "and he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law." The account goes on to its conclusion: "So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." Jesus himself followed the same course as the elder prophets, when, as Luke says, "as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read."

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