July 26, Mr, Harold Begbie, an author jand a journalist of considerable repute, has been contributing series of papers on the religions of the world to a London magazine. The last of the series dealt with Christian [Science and treated it as the lat-lest religion to make its appearance in the world, As far back las history reaches, and even in the dim antiquity before history began, wherever we find traces Jof man we find also traces of religion, According to the old-lest book in the world, when the first man appeared on earth he was already endowed with the religious instinct, even as Athena sprang fully armed from the head of her father Zeus. All the cults that have appeared since fare simply modifications or re statements and re-adjustments of the primal faith that is as ancient as man himself, But the rise of a new denomination, for Christian Science is scarcely more than that, is worthy of more than a passing thought. We ask ourselves what new aspect of truth it emphasizes and wherein lies its appeal; for appeal it undoubtedly has. The new faith does not win its converts as Wesley did and as the Salvation Army does from the lower strata of the population. it attracts the wealthy and the cultured and the rapidity with which i€ has spread proves that Jit has' struck a chord that vibrates deep in the heart of humanity.
'According to this writer Christian Science does not rest its claim to be a repository of truth' on the character of its foundress but on the nature of the dogmas which she taught. Mrs. Eddy has been severely, criticized in "her own country and her claim to have been recipient of a new revelati strenuously denied. Be that ai it may, the lady impressed her personality deeply on a vast nuniber of highly intelligent people. The foundational sertion of the system is contained im the formula that "reality is invisible; the things revealed by our senses are transient but the unseen is the eternal." We need have no hesitation in claiming that there is nothing new in this statement, It may have been new in the days of Enoch, the seventh from Adam,—but} even then, we are inclined to it could boast a hoary antiquity. In these latter days when science is supreme no one would for a moment contest its truth. The things we see, the everlasting hills, the suns; Jand systems that constitute our universe, all have their pristine youth and all' wax old and de-jean. The time will come when they shall be folded up like a garment' and pass away or} change their forms like fleecy clouds in' a summer sky. The invisible things like the ether, gravitation and electricity are eternal; eternal to us, at. any rate; for they neither change nor decay. If natural laws are projected into the spiritual world, for if they have a counterpart in that sphere, then it would be right to say that there is in morals, as in physics, that which is transient and that which is 1. Truth, beauty, right; are everlasting. Fals ity injustice; these are transient. This is the law ded' deep in the heart of humanity and attested by all history written' and unwritten, A bricklayer putting ona brick jon. top of another and so building-a wall must lay his bricks according to right principles or /his crazy wall will tumble down, him whitewash it as he will, It is: surely no otherwise in building a state. It is absurd suppose that if even a rabbit hutch cannot be constructed on sham and pretence so that it will last, a nation might be built up on the principles of fraud and hypocrisy, and the structure prove lasting. Boris Kowerda, for some unknown reason, shoots the Russian Minister to Poland and the government of Russia, out of spite and revenge, seizes some twenty innocent persons, connected with that state, and shoots them, out of hand, without trial or excuse, A band desperadoes in the Irish Free State waylay and murder Kevin O'Higgins on his way to Mass jon a Sunday morning and then disappear in the purlieus Dublin, There is no retribution fox these things; no one to bring the murderers to book, The crime appears to have been successful. Yeu, but there is a nemesis inherent in orf of this kind that defeats their very success, Crime begets crime as offal breeds maggots, and while the idea in the mind of the p petrators is that by these atrocities they are upholding the state they are, in truth, planting the seeds of future treacheries that would destroy the strongest Empire ever seen on earth.
"The soul," says Christian Science "is greater than the body". If there be a soul it must be so, A' soul that was less than the body would be monstrosity, and body without a soul would be a festering Have nations souls? They must have some principle by which to live or they will perish of their own corruption, And lastly, Christian Science that even a grain of faith will remove mountains, this, too, we would subscribe our adherence if we knew to what lobjoct that faith was: to be, linked. The African witch doctor has faith in his Mumbo-jumbo, but that faith, even if it wore Jas huge as a mountain, would save him. We are believ-sin the potency of faith if it is faith to believe that it is better to do right and fail than to wrong and triumph, Because, to return to our first right is one of the eternal things Jand falsehood crumbles in the hand that uses it,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.