Editorial October 17, 1925 Issue

"Conscientious in duty"

Duncan Sinclair

There are few qualities more desirable than conscientiousness. And it is equally true that nowhere is this valuable asset of character more in evidence than in the Christian Science movement. But that is not to say that even there it does not need to be cultivated; for reliability is an ever increasing demand upon all who, as students of Christian Science, are striving to demonstrate the great truths which this Science reveals and to make them known to their fellow-men. Mrs. Eddy gave expression to both an admonition and merited praise when she wrote in "No and Yes" (p. 2), "The honest student of Christian Science is modest in his claims and conscientious in duty, waiting and working to mature what he has been taught."

There is no single branch of the work of the Christian Science movement where conscientiousness can be dispensed with. Take the work which may follow upon membership with our branch churches and The Mother Church. A member becomes, say, a Reader in one of these. From the moment of his appointment to the end of his term of office his aim is so to purify his thought that he may realize the truth and voice the truth, as it is revealed in the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, in the public services conducted under the Manual of The Mother Church, in order to bless mankind. And then, too, he has to spend many studious hours, under the guidance of divine Mind, in the preparation of suitable readings for the services from these books, and in the selection of suitable hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal, in the endeavor to make each service as helpful as possible by the harmonious blending of all its parts. A Christian Science service should be as free as possible from personality; and it is wonderful how the consecrated, conscientious work of Readers and other officers associated with them in the work serves to attain this altogether desirable end.

Think also of the conscientiousness necessary to the carrying out of the duties of boards of directors, of trustees, of committees on publication, of librarians in Reading Rooms! Not a member of any of these officers could successfully carry on the work as an individual or in cooperation with others, without it. Faithful to the trust imposed upon him; just in deliberation and in the spoken or written word; upright in all his dealings with mankind; scrupulous in his integrity; exact in the carrying out of his duties—these are some of the demands which Christian Science makes upon every member who has signed the Tenets of The Mother Church. (See Science and Health, p. 497, or Church Manual, pp. 15 and 16.) No position is too humble, too lowly, for the exercise of conscientiousness in the Christian Science movement.

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