Editorial January 22, 1949 Issue

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON SERVICES, READERS, AND READING ROOMS

John Randall Dunn

What havens for the voyagers on the troubled waters of human experience are the Churches of Christ, Scientist, and their Reading Rooms! On Sundays and Wednesdays, when the church doors are open for services, how often do we hear of someone sick in body and heart making his way to the service, confident that uplift and healing await him there. How the troubled thought begins at once to be quieted when he enters the church auditorium and finds—not talking and whispering, but others like himself bent on quiet communion with the Father of lights.

How appreciated also is a quiet organ or piano prelude! A correspondent writes us in substance: "I treasure the holy, quiet times of prayer before the service: but why do organists and pianists sometimes set off their selections with such heavy, startling gusto? I have been many times in The Mother Church, and the initial music has left me with the feeling of peace and repose. One feels the gentleness of the strain as almost an echo of one's quiet prayer." May not our church organists, pianists, and music committees give some earnest thought to this correspondent's kindly and constructive observations?

Of course in the Reading Rooms, where absolute silence is the rule, one is not confronted with problems which may disturb the quiet seeker after Truth. Who can measure the exquisite relief which comes with the calming of some troubled waters as he sits in a hospitable Christian Science Reading Room and reads and ponders some life-giving, regenerating message of Truth?

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