Editorial January 24, 1925 Issue

Our Sunday Services

Ella W. Hoag

The entire Christian world unites in the acceptance and support of Sunday services. Its churches are, for the most part, opened each Sunday in the year, that people may congregate therein for the purpose of learning to know and worship God. Each denomination, after its own fashion, provides some form of preaching whereby those attending the services may be instructed and aided in such knowledge and worship. Inasmuch as these efforts are based on the desire to honor, exalt, and serve the one only God, they must bring blessing to all.

There is one test, however, to which the churches must submit if they would be sure that their services and preaching are measuring up to all that God requires of those proclaiming Him. Jesus furnished this touchstone when he commanded all his followers to “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.” The question therefore must always be, Are the services and preaching bringing such an understanding and worship of God that the results are evidenced in the “signs following” which Jesus demanded?

Now in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 345) Mrs. Eddy writes, “When the omnipotence of God is preached and His absoluteness is set forth, Christian sermons will heal the sick.” Christian Scientists understand that the omnipotence of God can be fully preached and His absoluteness be set forth completely only by a sermon in which His Word alone is proclaimed. They therefore rejoice unceasingly that their divinely inspired Leader placed for all time in the Churches of Christ, Scientist, the Bible and Science and Health as the only preachers, wherein and whereby is proclaimed the Word of God. Of this Word Mrs. Eddy has also said in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 11), “The Word of God is a powerful preacher, and it is not too spiritual to be practical, nor too transcendental to be heard and understood.”

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