Article July 5, 1913 Issue

DIVINE SERVICE

CAMPBELL MAC CULLOCH.

Quite frequently words are bland smugglers trying to pass the customs line of expression without paying full duty upon their burdens of meaning. They require to be sternly halted, thoroughly examined, and made to declare their full import and intent with reference to the mission upon which they are bent, and only in this way, it would seem, can they be made to yield up the hidden stores they have concealed about them.

The word service may be considered as an example in its application to church activity. To many persons the expression "divine service" seems to indicate a weekly performance of a set form or ceremonial, some worship to be concurred in mainly by the physical presence of one who professes a belief in the ceremony. This is a plain perversion of the sense and import of one of the commonest and most expressive words in the English language. A well-known dictionary gives a variety of shades of meaning to the word, and chief among them stands out the definition tending to perpetuate the erroneous concept conveyed above, viz., "public exercises of worship according to the . . . form prescribed by an ecclesiastical organization;" obviously a limited and faulty rendering in the light of Christian Science, where the words take on a broader significance. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 40), "It is sad that the phrase divine service has come so generally to mean public worship instead of daily deeds." Service in Christian Science is therefore the loving performance of any act or series of acts that tends to aid in the production of a clearer realization of the allness of God; and this definition is broadly applicable to any use to which the word service may be put.

Not long ago there came to the writer a young man who was then officiating as an usher in a Christian Science church, and he said: "I am going to ask to be relieved of duty, or changed to some other position where I can get more out of the service. I find I am losing much, and I cannot afford to miss the Bible reading and the silent prayer." Perhaps such an attitude is not uncommon in church matters, but it is unquestionably a most insidious form of error striving to separate the individual from his duty, particularly prone to attack the men of the usher force, and doubly dangerous because of the apparently truthful and laudable yearning in which it clothes itself. It should therefore be vigilantly guarded against, because it is a base counterfeit of right desire.

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