Editorial June 8, 1918 Issue

Remembrance

Annie M. Knott

Christian people are all familiar with Jesus' words as quoted by Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, where we read respecting the last supper which Jesus shared with his disciples, "This do in remembrance of me." It is quite true that Christian thought is drifting away from the more material and ceremonial significance which was once attached to these words, but it is surely important that we ask ourselves what we have put in place of them, whether we really remember the vital issues of the occasion which is presented in Paul's words, or whether professed Christian forget all that it implies on the ground that they have outgrown it. The apostle said it was a very serious thing to eat and drink unworthily at this sacramental occasion, and he said respecting those who did so, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep." With respect to this word sleep as here found, some ancient writers give the passage as reading "sleep the sleep of death." In either case it surely means that those who observed this rite of remembrance unworthily, failed to commemorate the life-giving truth which Christ Jesus brought to humanity, and which he desired above all else should be perpetuated in the ministry of his faithful followers.

It is quite well known that no material elements have ever been used at a Christian Science service, although there has always been in the Church of Christ, Scientist, a solemn communion which was intended to bind men to God and to unite all men in the brotherhood of Truth and Love. If any student of Christian Science were asked what is called to remembrance on the Sunday when a Lesson-Sermon on Sacrament is read in all Christian Science churches, he would undoubtedly answer that it was intended to commemorate the beloved Master's triumph over death and the grave, over everything which is unlike God. Respecting this Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 44): "The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being. ... He proved Life to be deathless and Love to be the master of hate." On the following page we read, "Jesus' deed was for the enlightenment of men and for the salvation of the whole world from sin, sickness, and death." Not alone on what may be called the communion Sabbath do Christian Scientists remember Jesus' demonstration of the power of infinite divine Love to overcome all evil, but every day, as they are engaged in the endeavor to establish the kingdom of God on earth, and to do it in the way the Master taught, in overcoming sickness, sin, and sorrow, with the joyful prospect before them of the final overcoming of death itself. As the Master's words are recalled, "This do in remembrance of me," they know that they can best commemorate his glorious work by doing their utmost to follow in his footsteps, in obeying his command to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and proclaim God's kingdom on earth as an ever present fact.

This question of remembrance brings to us that of individual experience. What is it that we are apt to remember most constantly—is it good or is it evil? It cannot be denied that the beliefs of sin and sorrow make very deep impressions upon mortals; hence the need of forgetting that which we should not remember, because if memory is charged with an equal sense of good and of evil, there is a constant tendency to let evil preponderate, and so we have occasion to wonder why we are not progressing in the realization of spiritual things with their inevitable health and harmony. We are not obeying the injunction to forget the things that are behind and to press on toward the goal of perfect Christianity. Let no one suppose at this point that Christian Scientists should ever hold in remembrance evil of any sort as a reality. Under present human conditions, if it seemed necessary for them to cast a glance over the past, they should do so in order to remember with gratitude the way by which they were led out of error into truth, and how they were strengthened for the journey and carried safely over the places which seemed too hard for the human sense.

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Extract from The Christian Science Monitor