[Il Nuovo Giornale, Florence, Italy (Translated from the Italian)]

At Boston, U.S.A., The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, has maintained for a long time a War Relief fund formed with the voluntary contributions of the Christian Scientists of America in order to come to the help of those countries stricken by the war. This fund was started two months after the breaking out of hostilities and by virtue of these contributions large and numerous sums of money have been distributed in Armenia, Servia, Poland, Lithuania, Belgium, Russia, Switzerland, Holland, France, England, Canada, and so forth. All the needy, without distinction of either religion or creed, nationality or political views, have profited and will profit by these gifts, which are distributed with the greatest modesty and delicacy. The Florence branch of The Mother Church, which has been established in this city for many years, received a large sum of money from the fund toward the end of 1916, and at the beginning of 1917 at once began operations, distributing money, clothes, boots and shoes, coal, food, linen, tickets for the economic kitchens, eggs and milk for the old and for the children. Then, to provide the many deserving and willing poor with some way of earning a living by their own work, the reading room at 1 Via della Spada was transformed into a room for the distribution of the raw material and as a depository for the made-up articles, all work done being literally paid for. They bought for many thousands of lire the raw material, especially wool and cloth of various qualities, so that it became possible to send to the front a very considerable quantity of socks and shirts, many things being also sent to the various military hospitals of Florence. Letters received bear witness to the gratitude both of officers and of men in the trenches.

When the refugees from the invaded provinces fled to Florence, the help given to them was prompt and efficacious. Boots and shoes, socks, clothes of all descriptions, and blankets, were distributed largely, as well as help in money, to the amount of many thousands of lire. In Florence itself and in many other cities of Italy, more especially in Brescia and Sarzana, the rents of more than six hundred families, principally those of soldiers, were paid. Brescial being in the war zone, the work carried on there was more intense, but the work was also extended to Rome and Loreto, and to the Carrara Mountains, where at least a hundred families receive regular assistance from the fund.

The total sum which the Florence branch has received from Boston up to June 12, 1918, amounts to 190,000 lire, and of this sum the greater part has already been given out. The Directors of The Mother Church have given assurance that this fund shall continue and be dispatched regularly, so that its admirable good work may continue without interruption as long as the needs of the moment render it necessary. Christian Science is in existence to-day because no other religion met the needs of suffering humanity, and the noble heart of the Christian Scientists of America are both happy and anxious to help with generosity and disinterestedness their brothers across the ocean, of whatever creed, thus showing their sympathy for Italy and their brotherly fellowship for the Italians.

[Samuel Zane Batten, D. D., in The Biblical World]

The churches have thundered on the minor sins of men and soft-pedaled on the major sins. What we need to-day is a church that will see the real, human, social wrong of sin, will trace it to its sources, and will show its infinite damage. The churches know how to denounce the obvious and disreputable sins, such as highway robbery, Sabbath desecration, wife-beating, and gambling. They do not fully see the deep damnation of such sins as financial greed, exploiting a defenseless people, murdering infants in insanitary slums, and working the life and hope out of men and women. They know how to see the connection between the poisoner and his victim, but they do not often see the relation between the schemes of a group of greedy bankers and the wrongs of the Hereros and the burning of Louvain. For thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot betrayed the Master to his enemies. For the sake of business, men are willing to encourage war scares and plunge the nations into war. Men are willing to kill by shot and shell because they have killed by lovelessness and treachery.

But can the churches do this work? Will they do it? As a matter of fact, many of those who sit in Moses' seat have neither the insight nor the courage for this work. They do not have the insight to track sin to its sources, to show its essential sinfulness, to pierce beneath the robe of respectability, to see the far-away and world-wide results. They do not have the imagination to see the connection between a group of speculators in London or Paris, in Berlin or New York, and a people robbed of its resources, driven into revolt, its children slain, its women outraged, its army treading homes under foot in utter ruthlessness. The churches, many of them, do not have the courage to testify against these respectable sins, to make men know that these things are hateful before high heaven, and that those who do such things cannot escape the judgment of hell. The churches must drag these sins, all sins, into the light; they must expose them, brand them, slay them with the sword of the Spirit.

[New York (N. Y.) World]

The fact as stated by Surgeon General Ireland that "more than two thousand American soldiers in France suffering from shell shock were cured by news of the signing of the armistice," is an interesting contribution to the pathology of nervous disease. These war hospital patients were not suffering from an imaginary ailment; the physical manifestations of their affliction were apparent, amounting in some cases to bodily disfigurement. Yet their cure seems to have been entirely due to the influence of the imagination, being instantly effected by their realization that they would not again be subjected to the same experience.

This evidence of the mind's power over the body will afford great satisfaction to believers in the efficacy of mental or spiritual methods of healing. What have the materialists to say about it? Psychiatrists will allege the capacity of their art to cure disease of this nature, and according to a statement from the Surgeon General's office "improved methods of combating the affliction" in army hospitals have materially reduced it. Yet the fact remains of nature's dramatic and immediate cure by the simple means of removing apprehension.