Article May 11, 1918 Issue

Fruits of Obedience

THORWALD SIEGFRIED

The fact that the by-laws of The Mother Church, contained in the Church Manual, constitute a record of the answers to Mrs. Eddy's prayers for guidance in her direction of the Christian Science movement, was stated in a recent number of the Christian Science Sentinel. This was proved to the writer, shortly after beginning a study of the Manual, by the beneficent results which followed obedience to its simple, yet fundamental, directions.

To take but a single example: Article VIII, Section 5, provides that "the prayers in Christian Science churches shall be offered for the congregations collectively and exclusively." This, from a wholly theoretical point of view, seemed to be a rule without a reason; nevertheless, having profited by obedience to other rules, it was not long until the writer made the experiment of faith, and obeyed its provisions. Obedience required that the fervent desires for self, anxieties about loved ones, and perplexities about problems embracing all humanity, when handled in prayer while in church, should be considered in terms that would be for the congregation. If the problem was one of personal lack, the answering truth must be the admission that in God's realm the congregation was infinitely supplied with good. Anxious fears for personal friends are ruled out, in church, by the "perfect love" for the entire congregation as a divine idea, which casts out fear. Speculative questions on political matters are brought into a practical scope by the necessity of becoming prayerfully willing to do as well by the congregation, at least for the hour, as our social ideals demand for all mankind alike.

Then came the discovery, after one hour's obedience, that the mists of earth had thinned. The personal problem which had weighed so heavily up to the church door, and which this rule, like a shepherd's rod held across the entrance, had barred out, no longer inspired fear, and near friends and far friends were easily left in God's loving care instead of being cumbered with officious and anxious meddling; in short, there was realized a definite measure of what is promised in Samuel Longfellow's poem, as sung in Christian Science churches (Hymnal, p. 4):—

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