An Editor's Experience

Sidney (Ia.) Herald

In Omaha last Sunday we went with an old friend to attend the Christian Science church to which his wife belongs. We entered the hall where the services were to be held just at the close of the Sunday School, and found ourselves in a large room having a seating capacity of nearly a thousand. When we spoke of the largeness of the room we were told that every seat was usually occupied, and before the close of the service we found this to be true.

We had heard so many awful things said about Christian Scientists that we were curious to know what an aggregation of them looked like. We found them representative of the more intelligent, better class of American citizens, if there is such a thing as a "better class" in a country where it is denied that there are classes. They were well featured, well dressed, sane and healthy in appearance, and looked like people who were very much alive and glad of it. There was nothing queer or freakish about any of them, nothing savoring of the wild-eyed, fanatical enthusiast or "reformer." There was no excitement in their service; everything was quiet and decorous. They place emphasis upon the divine, the spiritual. These are the things that they say are real and eternal; sensual and evil things are transient and illusory. It almost seems as if the poet Moore touched a Christian Science key when he sang,—

This world is all a fleeting show,
For man's illusion given;

There's nothing true but Heaven.

And Pope, when he said,—

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Christian Science has been defined as being a statement of God's omnipotence over evil of every sort.

Among the members present in the meeting we attended were merchants, lawyers, judges, teachers, editors, and other professional men.—Sidney (Ia.) Herald.

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