Article June 7, 1919 Issue

Who Benefits Most?

GEORGE P. BALDWIN

One would naturally think that Le Héraut, our most recent periodical, was intended particularly for the French speaking people. Most of us have German speaking acquaintances to whom we have frequently sent Der Herold, and felt that we had sown seed in fallow ground. When, however, it comes to French acquaintances many of us look in vain and think our quest ended, because we do not look within ourselves. We do not realize that the publication is intended as much for us as for them. Most Christian Scientists are aware that many French, Italians, and Germans have painstakingly learned English (and learned it well) through the French and German translations of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In most cases these people have become particularly good working Scientists, because of the indefatigable work necessary to master the original language of the textbook, making it imperative to study instead of to wander; and this very close application has so brought out the spiritual import that it has not even collided with the intellectual thought which is so blinding to the full understanding of Mrs. Eddy's words.

The study of Le Héraut is an excellent means of supplementing the study of the French language, the French translation being on the page opposite each page of English; but even advanced students of French will realize at once what a wonderful aid to metaphysical understanding is this carefully wrought translation from English into French. On page 520 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "Human language can repeat only an infinitesimal part of what exists." She thus and in other places regrets the paucity of the human tongue to convey spiritual thought; but there is such difficulty in some cases of finding exact equivalents in French for the English words or expressions that this very wonderful translation becomes a double check against failure to understand Mrs. Eddy's words. This is only one of the many benefits to be derived from the study of Le Héraut. I know of nothing that can better help one to understand the French language, if he will also turn for a time to a French Grammar.

There has probably been no time in the life of the English speaking nations when there was such concerted effort to learn the French language, and in Le Héraut we find the undefiled French. To Christian Scientists there is a doubled incentive in the desire to be helpful to the French speaking people; and how can we understand them so well as through becoming co-students of Christian Science with them? Work applied in this way will speed the help they need and will, in the giving, increase our supply. Anglo-Saxons have been proverbially lacking in their understanding of the so-called Latin races. Where could there be a better threshold to meet them than on the rock of Truth which "will waken men spiritually to hear and to speak the new tongue" (Science and Health, p. 354)? What is so necessary to the elimination of the mist of the material nationality as the understanding of Christian Science?

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