In one of your issues I note a very commendable editorial...

R. Stanhope Easterday—Portland, Ind.

Commercial-Review

In one of your issues I note a very commendable editorial respecting the changed methods of religious activity and the nearer approximation of present-day Christian workers to the idea of divine compassion as set forth in the golden rule. Your inference is expressed in the words, "Both the pulpit and the pew are better than they were under the old regime, when bigotry reigned and the fagots of the auto da fe were too often the weapons of the weapons of the ruling sect."

In marked contrast to the foregoing is the report, covering fully two thirds of the editorial page of the same issue, of a sermon in which the gospel standard of Christian preaching and teaching is departed from in dealing with systems of religious teaching that differ from his own particular interpretation of Holy Writ.

True religion is essentially and always constructive, and in order to prove his own rightness or righteousness the Christian need not vilify others or even prove their works and conceptions to be wrong. He has only to set forth to the world in the form of good "words" or "signs following" the rightness of his own deductions, leaving the efforts of others to stand or fall on their own merits. The world's Saviour declared unequivocally, "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." In another place Jesus urged: "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

Truth destroys only error, and it does this as light destroys darkness, by displacing it, putting something in the place of nothing. It was indeed declared of our Lord, "The Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil," but our Saviour designated this same "devil" or "Satan" to be "a liar, and the father of it," affirming furthemore that it was his "Word," or divine Truth, alone that eliminated this lie or untruth about God and man, regenerating and saving the sinner, but destroying the belief in sin. It is upon the basis of this Scriptural line of logic that Christian Science deduces the idea of the unreality of evil.

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