Nothing is more depleting to one's energy, more dampening to enthusiasm, or more discouraging to hope, than an abiding sense of spiritual inadequacy. Many a brave heart has borne up against its depressing influence, in definitely, through the sustaining consciousness that his highest conviction of duty was being honored, and the story of such an unavailing heroism would be rightly named, — An Epic of Tears.

Human life, at its best, means ceaseless endeavor, and it were pitiful indeed if, at any moment of the struggle, we were denied the sustaining and stimulating consciousness that, despite all, we are winning. Such moments are experienced, however, and as, with many, they have grown into years, the heart-history has become tragic. The artifices of pride and prejudice often prompt to the explanations of an attempted self-deception, but there is abundant reason for thinking that this saddening sense of inefficiency is felt by the great majority of Christian workers in all lands to-day. Evidence of the fact may be gathered from many sources, and notably from current religious literature. The following frank confession, which we have recently quoted from an exchange, is fairly representative. "No thoughtful person can contemplate the immense expenditures of sincere and earnest labor and of money in Christian work to-day, and the utterly inadequate results therefrom, without a feeling that there is a serious error, somewhere. May it not be that the followers of Christ are not only sapping their energies and resources by their divisions, but are rendering complete success impossible by failure to comply with the fundamental condition on which Christ himself hung the triumph of his gospel?"

We are entirely sure that this questioning thought embraces very little if any doubt respecting the truth of the teachings of Christianity. Men believe in the presence and power of God, and in the spiritual sovereignty of the life and words of Christ Jesus, but the confidence and joy of a well-grounded assurance is lacking, and for the reason and that the promised overcoming is not realized. Christian laymen as well as leaders are dissatisfied and distressed, and rightly so, with the meagreness of the results attending conscientious Christian effort. This increasing discontent is one of the most encouraging aspects of the situation; for however lamentable our failures, their frank recognition always brings a promise of betterment to the aspiring. The uncovering of error in honest thought presages its overthrow, and Christian workers, both as individuals and as organized bodies, do well to deepen their sense of the contrast between what is, and what ought to be, and enlarge and establish their understanding of their privilege and power as the ambassadors of Christ. Said Joshua to Israel, "One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you;" for you;" and Paul, speaking to the early Christians, in yet more comprehensive terms, of the believer's spiritual adequacy, said, "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God."

As Christian Scientists we have been led to see that the tremendous emphasis thus laid upon the manifestation of Divine power, through man, leaves no excuse, in any age, for incompetency, no place for failure. We have come to understanding that the "has been" of fulfilment and the "will be" of promise can beget no abiding confidence or inspiration without the "I am" of present demonstration. We perceive that defeating unfaith is the legitimate outcome of the belief of the reality and consequent permanence of the things which are against god and the ideal life; and of the practical denial of the immediate redemptive power of the Christ-idea in consciousness.

Our brother is right, beyond all question, in attributing much of the inefficiency of Christian endeavor to un-Christian division. "That they may be one, as we are one." So hoped and prayed the Master, and his followers may well grieve as they remember the weakness and failure which to-day, as in all the past, attend religious strifes and separation. How saddening, how unworthy of professing Christians, how needless this blight! Christian Scientists have been abundantly taught, if they have not yet perfectly learned, that only oneness in Christ can win; and that the Master comes not to abide, until this devasting demon is cast out. Christian Science means union upon the divinely appointed and only possible basis; viz., a demonstrable and therefore scientific understanding of the Christ-teaching.

More serious, however, than separation from one another, is separation from God. It accounts not only for the divisions among men, it is also the final explanation of all unanswered prayer and ineffectual endeavor. Jesus' teaching respecting God's ever-presence has always been vigorously maintained by the Church, but the possibility of the logical sequence of that presence, as demonstrated by Jesus, who in all his healing declared that his Father did the works, has been as vigorously denied. Christian Science has come to re-affirm and to prove the practical availability of Spirit, divine Truth, in the healing of sickness and sin. It is demonstrating that, through right understanding, the knowledge of Truth, God is present to supplement the aspiring endeavor of human sense, to save it from itself and from defeat. Thus, and thus alone, can we attain to that unfaltering confidence, that spiritual exaltation, and that unfailing adequacy which belong to every follower of him who said, "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. . . . These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

John B. Willis.