Editorial June 1, 1946 Issue

"Our annual meeting is a grave guardian"

John Randall Dunn

Without doubt alert students of Christian Science in every land cherish the desire to be present, sometime, at an Annual Meeting of their Mother Church in Boston. While the Church Manual requires attendance of only the officers, nevertheless every member has the privilege of coming to this happy annual assemblage, which invariably proves enlightening and uplifting. At this meeting one hears reports from those charged with sacred stewardship—from the Directors, the Clerk, the Treasurer, and from other departments of The Mother Church.

Some years ago, when the beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, was physically with us, the meetings proved especially joyous when she sent one of her incomparable messages to her followers. Happily, these inspired communications have been preserved for posterity in Mrs. Eddy's Prose Works; and blessed and refreshed will be the present-day students who reread, particularly at Annual Meeting time, one of these messages.

On June 4, 1899, Mrs. Eddy sent to her Church an epistle which may well rank with some of Paul's important letters to the early Christians. Herein she paints this telling word picture of the purpose of the yearly assemblage (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 125): "Brethren, our annual meeting is a grave guardian. It requires you to report progress, to refresh memory, to rejuvenate the branches and to vivify the buds, to bend upward the tendrils and to incline the vine towards the parent trunk. You come from feeding your flocks, big with promise; and you come with the sling of Israel's chosen one to meet the Goliaths."

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