Article May 20, 1933 Issue

"Go ye ... into the highways"

THOMAS NELSON

In the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is given Jesus' parable likening the kingdom of heaven to "a certain king, which made a marriage for his son," who, when those bidden to the wedding feast refused to come, said to his servants, "Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage." As a true servant continuing to spread abroad this generous invitation, the literature issued by The Christian Science Publishing Society and distributed through various channels goes forth "into the highways" of the world. In many languages it bears its message to people of different races and denominations. It speaks to the executive, the laborer, to persons of education or without training. The message announces a feast of spiritual riches, awaiting everyone who cares to heed the invitation.

The experience of one who became a student of Christian Science affords an illustration of how this message reaches those prepared to receive it. A family, in whose home he sometimes visited, occasionally received copies of the Christian Science Sentinel. On one of his visits, when he was idly glancing into one of them, his attention was arrested by a reference to the unreality of matter. He was familiar with the writings of philosophers and teachers of natural science, who had tried to explain the creation of the universe and to account for the origin of things material. As these teachings were mainly formulated on the concept of matter as being real, this reference to matter as being unreal was to him new and rather startling, and he decided to investigate the teachings of Christian Science and find out how it explained the nature of matter.

This decision he at once proceeded to carry out. Literature was obtained from the local Christian Science Reading Room—the writings of Mrs. Eddy, periodicals, and pamphlets; and for an entire summer he devoted practically all his spare time to this reading. At first the study was approached in an attitude somewhat critical. He was prepared to examine this teaching in the light of his previously acquired knowledge, and to measure it with the yardstick of his intellect. As he continued, however, his critical attitude was abandoned, because he found that his standards of comparison, the knowledge and education obtained in previous studies, utterly failed him. The original object of his search, the nature of matter, assumed an unexpected insignificance and was soon relegated to the background in his thoughts. But he read on with steadily mounting interest, because he had caught a glimpse of that which alone is real, namely, Spirit and things spiritual. To him came what must invariably come to anyone who studies the authorized Christian Science literature with a sincere desire to find out what it presents: he began to learn the truth and to know God. On page vii of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says: "The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity."

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