Article July 29, 1922 Issue

Without Prejudice

W. K. PRIMROSE

Several years ago, a legislator remarked to a young student of politics, "If you want throughly to understand a subject before the House, do not obtain your information from editorials in the daily newspapers but from the reports and debates themselves." It would be unfair to say that the press accounts of business in a legislature are purposely colored. It is very difficult, however, for any one to write an account of a debate without allowing his preconceived views to affect his report. The wish, we know, is father to the thought. The ability to write a report which conveys the most accurate impression of what actually took place and what the speakers said is the test of a good reporter. To be able to meet this test he must first learn to discriminate between the essential and the nonessential, and to keep himself free from outside influences and bias: he must act without prejudice.

How easily many of us can recall instances where an unfavorable opinion of some one has been formed by a chance remark of some friend, or by something we may have read about him! Our opinions of the statesmen charged with the responsibility of government are nearly always formed from what we have read or have heard about them; and we do not always pause to consider if the things said about them are true. As Christian Scientists, our thinking should always be constructive, and, whatever the circumstances, never condemnatory of persons. It is necessary, therefore, that care be taken to ascertain the truth, and that statements and stories be weighed and sifted before being accredited. New ideas are not always easily or quickly assimilated; and experience shows that, frequently, time and patience are required before they can be clearly understood.

It is a matter of history that for nearly three centuries after our Master's ascension his teachings were so clearly understood that the members of the early Christian church healed the sick; and, as it is recorded, they even raised the dead. Then followed a seemingly long period when the practical signification of what Jesus had taught was lost to mankind, until its Science was discovered by Mary Baker Eddy in February, 1866. After her discovery, the difficulty that confronted Mrs. Eddy was how to convey to others the revelation she had received. On page 114 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she writes: "Apart from the usual opposition to everything new, the one great obstacle to the reception of that spirituality, through which the understanding of Mind-science comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make them comprehensible to any reader, who has not personally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth in my discovery."

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