Editorial December 25, 1909 Issue

OUR EXPERIENCE MEETINGS

Annie M. Knott

In Mark's Gospel we read that Jesus said to a man who had been wonderfully healed by him, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee." Those who are healed at the present time through divine power, as made known in Christian Science, are usually ready to tell their friends of their healing, but they find it a much more difficult matter to speak of it at the Wednesday evening meeting where others are assembled, yet this very thing is a part of our services in which all are expected to participate. A number of years ago our revered Leader distinctly stated that no collections were to be taken at the experience meetings, but that instead all were to give and to take of the spiritual blessings dispensed at "this feast and flow of Soul." She added: "Ask them to bring what they possess of love and light to help leaven your loaf and replenish your scanty store. Then, after presenting the various offerings, and one after another has opened his lips to discourse and distribute what God has given him of experience, hope, faith, and understanding, gather up the fragments, and count the baskets full of accessions to your love, and see that nothing has been lost" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 149).

This message to The Mother Church was of inestimable value to all its branches, and it would help us as individual members if we were to study it betimes. There can be no question that the first duty of each is to give of what he has; his next is to receive with thankfulness what others have to offer, and it may be just as difficult to do the one thing as the other. Most of us know by experience how hard it seemed at first to express at all adequately our sense of the blessings we had received, and we usually resumed our seats with a feeling that we had failed to tell the very things which we most desired to say. A lady who had been wonderfully healed had for months desired to tell of this at the meeting, but lacked courage to speak in public. Finally, she rose one night and said, "I am very thankful for Christian Science;" then sat down, wiping away the tears which came because her offering was so small. But the channel had been opened, and later her gratitude flowed forth freely.

Another lady once brought some friends who were strangers to Christian Science to a Wednesday evening meeting at The Mother Church. This was before the extension was built, and she could not get a seat with these friends, and did not find them at the close of the meeting, which she had thought less interesting than usual. Some weeks later, she was called up by one of these friends, who said she had not missed a service since, and was studying Science and Health and demonstrating the healing power of Truth.

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