Some correspondents of the Clerk of The Mother Church, who ask the requirements for admission to membership in the Church, seem to have difficulty in understanding the responsibilities of endorsers of applications. The requirements set forth in Articles V and VI of the Church Manual can be stated briefly thus:

1. An applicant who is a class-taught pupil should, if possible, secure his teacher's approval, and needs no countersignature to his application. His teacher, if he signs the application, knows him to be worthy of membership.

2. If the teacher cannot or will not sign an application for his pupil, the pupil may apply under Article V, Section 4, obtaining a special application blank from the Clerk of The Mother Church, which is to be endorsed (in other words, approved) by three members of The Mother Church in good standing, who regard him as eligible. No countersignature should be added.

3. If an applicant has not had class instruction, he needs a Mother Church member to approve his application—one who knows him to be of the classification named in Article VI, Section 2, as follows: a Christian and a "faithful, loyal" student "of the textbook, SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES." If the approver holds the position of teacher or has the designation C.S.B. from the Board of Education, or is a Director of The Mother Church, no countersignature is required. The approver, if not one of these, should obtain the countersignature of one having such qualification.

A correspondent writes that, endeavoring to apply for membership in The Mother Church, she asked a friend whom she had known most of her life to approve her application. The friend requested her teacher to countersign, but the teacher was unwilling since she did not personally know the applicant. She states that another qualified to countersign refused to do so for the same reason. It was necessary for the approver, who knew the eligibility of the applicant, to get still another teacher of Christian Science to countersign the application, a procedure which is of course permissible. Although one who is asked to countersign for membership may prefer to do so only after seeing and talking with the applicant, it should be clearly understood that nowhere in the Church Manual does Mrs. Eddy make it incumbent upon the countersigner to be personally acquainted with the applicant.

The growing amity between the Christian Science church and other churches is exemplified oftener in recent years than it was a decade ago. It is evidenced in the more frequent recognition of the Christian Science church as a sister church, or as having a like basic aim—to know God.

An increased number of requests for speakers has come to The Christian Science Monitor from clubs and other organizations, including religious units, which are interested in learning something about this daily paper whose object, as given by its Founder, Mrs. Eddy, is "to injure no man, but to bless all mankind" (Miscellany, p. 353).

The Christian Science Committees on Publication are more busily engaged than ever before in giving talks on Christian Science, upon invitation from religious, social, and business groups of men or women, and young peoples' organizations. More than eighty such talks were given during the year 1934, an increase of about sixty per cent over the year before. After one such talk, delivered to a group of clergymen in England, appreciation was expressed as on all such occasion, and one of the listeners remarked that he had never met a man who knew his Bible so well as did the speaker.

Other instances of Christian amity, too, arise from time to time, such as the following: A Christian Science church in a Mississippi town needed an auditorium in which to give a lecture. It applied to the local First Baptist Church and was unanimously granted the use of its auditorium. On the Sunday before the lecture the pastor announced the lecture from the pulpit and voiced the hope that all the members would attend, and that the ushers would be in their usual places to greet their guests. The Christian Science lecture drew a large attendance, and many expressed apprectiation that it was accompanied by such a spirit of love as was shown by both Baptists and Christian Scientists. The pastor declined to receive compensation for the use of the auditorium, saying that it was granted "purely as an act of friendly and Christian courtesy on our part—we felt that you were our guests."

A lecture on Christian Science, recently given in English, in Stockholm, Sweden, had an audience of about sixteen hundred people. With the permission of The Christian Science Board of Directors, as on a few past occasions, the lecture was translated into Swedish and read in translation to about nineteen hundred listeners shortly after its delivery in English. But a still wider audience was to have that lecture, for thirty-five thousand copies of the daily paper in which the translation was printed in full were distributed, this being a distribution much greater than the ordinary daily output of this newspaper.

So far as can be ascertained, Mrs. Eddy's teachings were first introduced into Sweden about the latter part of the nineteenth century. It is commendable, indeed, when people, speaking another language than that in which Christian Science literature came to the world, take up its study and overcome as they must the obstacles of language and custom. Greatly do they look forward to the messages of the lecturers, which bring them comfort in place of sorrow, courage in place of discouragement, health in place of sickness. That the listeners and readers in Sweden on this occasion received these blessings is undoubtedly true, as has been evidenced by their letters and activities.

In these days when discouragement seems rampant, and when lack of activity appears enforced, it is good to know that among the listeners to the lecture was a man who had for some time been sorely depressed, but who, as a result of the truth he received on this occasion, became confident and hopeful and entered upon his duties with increased interest. Another young man, who had been discouraged about his business, gained the idea from the lecture that his business could be improved by his thinking rightly. The next day, through his illumined thinking, he found a question solved that for an entire year he had tried without success to cope with. He attributed the result to the truth he had learned of Christian Science during this lecture. And so all the world's difficulties can be solved.