Article March 5, 1932 Issue

"Gathered together in my name"

ARTHUR TIPTON STEWART

"Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." So spake Jesus the Christ. It is a promise of matchless worth. What could possibly mean so much to us as that presence—the Christ-presence—which shed so strong a light in Palestine twenty centuries ago? Like a gracious benediction, it still rests uon all mankind, everywhere; but are we doing as much as we should to invoke fulfillment of the promise?

A student of Christian Science found himself in a small town which seemed likely to be his home for some months. His first impulse was to seek the Christian Science services to which he had been accustomed elsewhere, but to his dismay he learned that there were none held there, and that he must needs journey many miles to another and somewhat larger town if he were to participate in and enjoy them. Outweighing the though of inconvenience and expense was the feeling that the compassionate injunction of the Master, "Feed my sheep," was being neglected. Feeling that his own disappointment must be shared by others in the community, with whose identity he was naturally unacquainted, he was led to place in the newspaper of weekly issue in the town a notice inviting any thereabout who might be interested in the study of Christian Science to communicate with a designated post office box, it being the one through which he received his mail. With a promptness which assured him of the correctness of his surmise, he received half a dozen replies, some from persons within the town itself and others from the adjacent countryside. As a result of the contacts thus made, Sunday morning services of an informal character, but following the order prescribed by the Manual of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, were begun. They proved of comfort and satisfaction to a gathering whose numbers increased as the fact of their being held became known. A start had been made. The seed had been planted, and already its flower had begun to bestow its healing and saving fragrance where stark and unlovely barrenness had been before.

To a generation whose hearts waxed gross, whose pious utterances could not conceal empty lives, and who were sadly negligent of spiritual things, Jesus stated the opportunity and the need found in this small town. He found the people "scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd," and was moved compassionately to say, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few." Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, restated it in this age in those words of such frequent and appreciative quotation: "Millions of unprejudiced minds—simple seekers for Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert—are waiting and watching for rest and drink" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 570); and in the next sentence she enjoins her followers to "give them a cup of cold water in Christ's name." There is another host, also millions in number, who know that their weariness was overcome and their thirst quenched through the study and application of Christian Science. Are they being alert, wherever they may find themselves placed, to see that the channel which the church services afford to give that "cup of cold water" to those other millions of whom our revered Leader speaks, is gladly and faithfully kept open, available, and functioning?

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