Article June 25, 1921 Issue

"To your tents, O Israel"

WILLIAM RUFUS SCOTT

IN the history of Christian Science the year 1908 marks the beginning of an epoch. For it was then that Mary Baker Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor and thereby challenged not only the world but Christian Scientists themselves to take a forward step in the realm of the real. We may be too close to the event to have a full perspective, but if we will examine metaphysically the chemicalization since that date, in mortal mind generally, as well as in the ranks of Christian Scientists, we may find the true explanation of much that has seemed to be distressing.

No greater mistake can be made by the working student of Christian Science, however long his experience may be, than to assume that he has so definitely arrived at the knowledge of the truth as to be able to stand apart and merely watch the ferment it is causing in mortal mind. Mrs. Eddy in the article "Watching versus Watching Out," beginning on page 232 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," made this abundantly clear. Therefore to assume that the launching of the Monitor was just a challenge only to mortal mind unenlightened by Christian Science, and not a call for higher demonstration by Christian Scientists, is equivalent to assuming that students of Christian Science already have come to the "stature of the fulness of Christ." Mrs. Eddy says in the article mentioned (p. 233), "Ignorance of self is the most stubborn belief to overcome, for apathy, dishonesty, sin, follow in its train."

Have we thought that Mrs. Eddy waited twenty-five years to establish the Monitor because the world was not prepared for the demonstration of a newspaper of this kind? Was she not waiting not only for that, but more especially for the ripening of the understanding of her followers? And does not the year 1908 mark the beginning of an epoch in the history of Christian Science because it was then that Mrs. Eddy perceived that the growth of the truth had reached a sturdy manhood which justified her in sending forth Christian Science in a way more militant than she had done hitherto? If the extract from the first editorial in the Monitor, reprinted on page 353 of Miscellany, is studied with particular reference to the verbs she used in describing the functions of her various periodicals, it will be seen that the establishment of each one marked a new epoch in Christian Science, and the establishment of the Monitor was the "full grain in the ear" indeed. She says: "I have given the name to all the Christian Science periodicals. The first was The Christian Science Journal, designed to put on record the divine Science of Truth; the second I entitled Sentinel, intended to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love; the third, Der Herold der Christian Science, to proclaim the universal activity and availability of Truth; the next I named Monitor, to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent. The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind."

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