Article March 22, 1924 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from A. R. Holderby, C. C. Harcourt, Gaius Glenn Atkins, Charles S. Knight

[From The Christian Science Monitor, as quoted in the Express, Springfield, Mo., Jan 25, 1924]

Scarcely a hundred and fifty years ago, in a letter to Dr. Priestly in which he waxed enthusiastic about the wonderful inventions and discoveries of his time, Benjamin Franklin penned these remarkable words: "The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried in a thousand years the power of man over matter. Oh! that the moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity."

Franklin's doubts have been abundantly justified. After a century of so-called progress unparalleled in history, men converted every atom of their new knowledge to the fell purpose of killing one another in the Great War. Have we learned the lesson? A correction was made in the April 19, 1924 Sentinel: Since the appearance of the editorial, "Signs of the Times," in the <i>Sentinel</i> of March 22, it has been disclosed that the report of an alleged award from a so-called "Benjamin Franklin Fund" in London to the author of the book "Mental and Spiritual Healing" is a fraud. The advices regarding such an award, both from London and Los Angeles, seemed wholly authentic; yet it now appears that there is no such fund and that there has been no such award. The hoax perpetrated by the author of the book was wide-spread, having received much publicity through the press. The quotation from the book in question, however, regarding Mary Baker Eddy, is correct.

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