Article September 14, 1918 Issue

A Christian Science Lecture

PAUL STARK SEELEY

A Christian Science lecture is no ordinary occasion. Rightly conceived it is at one with the most important event of the ages, for it is the public presentation of spiritual Truth, which is the one corrective power that can save men from sin, disease, and mortality. Metaphysically considered it is the hand of God extended to mankind, a part of the Christly activity appearing throughout the ages and now finding expression in the Christian Science movement. Our Leader's recognition of the importance of the lecture work is indicated in her letter to the Board of Lectureship on page 248 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," where she says: "You are the needed and the inevitable sponsors for the twentieth century, reaching deep down into the universal and rising above theorems into the transcendental, the infinite—yea, to the reality of God, man, nature, the universe. ... The Christ mode of understanding Life—of exterminating sin and suffering and their penalty, death—I have largely committed to you, my faithful witnesses."

Christian Science is raising up the walls of the New Jerusalem—the kingdom of heaven—in the consciousness of men. The lecture with its truth-affirming message, strong and positive, points ever to "the stone which the builders rejected," now discerned as the chief corner stone of the city of light and glory. How well should we prepare for and protect all our building upon this corner stone!

By the beloved disciple the divine vitality of the Word of God has been thus proclaimed: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;" and Christ Jesus declared, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." So when the Word finds expression in a Christian Science lecture, it is no passing current of personal opinion, but is one with ever present and eternal Mind. It is the assertion of the divine esse, the affirmative voice of reality. It is in no wise conditioned by physical environment or locality, for its place is infinity, its time eternity. The Word coexists with God. To human sense a Christian Science lecture is an occasion when mortals consent to listen for a little to the ever present truth,—to dwell for a time in the natural atmosphere of spiritually enlightened thought. It is to them a rift in the clouds of mortal, material consciousness.

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