Our Church Service

HELEN M. MULLIN

One of the great legacies from the Leader of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy, to mankind is the Christian Science church service. Hungry hearts are fed and sick bodies are healed at the Sunday and Wednesday services. Congregational worship, characterized by spiritual understanding, provides an effectual healing power for the whole world. The services not only heal and bless the individuals who attend them, but send forth a universally regenerating influence, the beneficence of scientific prayer being measureless. Mrs. Eddy has beautifully expressed the value of prayer in the Christian Science services on page 189 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" in these words: "The silent prayers of our churches, resounding through the dim corridors of time, go forth in waves of sound, a diapason of heart-beats, vibrating from one pulpit to another and from one heart to another, till truth and love, commingling in one righteous prayer, shall encircle and cement the human race."

The world-weary find in the Christian Science Sunday and Wednesday services inspiration to press on to joys higher than those offered by materiality. They find that God, who is omnipresent good, divine Mind, supplies wisdom to guide them every step in their journey heavenward. The sick come to seek the divine truth which heals disease, and find a present reward for this seeking in their restoration to health. They feel the ever-flowing tides of divine Love encompassing their being, and are borne into spiritual realms of new and better thinking, where fear, sickness, and suffering fade away. The sinning find that God regenerates them with the sweet peace of purity, replacing the belief of pleasure in sin with the heaven-born joy of true manhood.

The services in the Christian Science churches bring out the true worship which demonstrates the healing and regenerating power of the Christ. The Lesson-Sermon, read in the Sunday services, unfolds the revelation of God's eternality and His infinite love to man. The enlightenment resulting from study of the Lesson-Sermon dissolves the human will and its destructive results through recognition of the ever-operativeness of God's will or law. The Lesson-Sermon rings forth the joyous message of good, even as the shepherds of old heard it when the angel multitude sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." It gives poise, peace, and strength to all who read or listen with understanding. The Word goes forth with power. The message proceeds from God, Truth, and accomplishes the divine purpose. It fills each human need as no human power can do. No attempt of evil can turn back or stultify what God is doing for the human race through the Christian Science services.

With proper preparation and consecration on the part of Readers and congregation the Lesson-Sermon will rouse thought to new hope, higher aspirations, and greater confidence in God and His ability to save. Sacred stillness and peace are found in the services when the attentive and alert thought of the congregation mounts above the ponderosity of mortal selfhood in receiving the impersonal message of the Lesson-Sermon. Earnest listeners drink in the sense of the ever-presence of the divine Father-Mother, God. In that hour the demands of personal sense are subdued and error fades from thought. Aspiration, inspiration, revelation, bring the realization that spiritualized thought is indeed the temple of the Holy Ghost. "The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him."

The true sense of the office of Reader brings the realization that it is not persons but the Bible and Science and Health which preach the gospel that enlightens the people. The Lesson-Sermon rests upon a spiritual platform composed not of human creed or doctrine, but of the clear statement of truth, a foundation that can never be shaken. The basic truth of Christian Science is that God, divine Mind, is All, and that the universe, including man, is spiritual and perfect. Upon this truth the Christian Scientist bases all his thinking, and from it he derives his strength. Each Reader prays that his thoughts may be spiritually at one with God and His message. What superb joy and adequate protection! In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 347) our Leader writes, "God is responsible for the mission of those whom He has anointed." Each Reader therefore knows that he cannot be weary in well-doing; that he can, without suffering, give a cup of cold water in Christ's name. He knows that the very act of serving is its own protection. He realizes that the truth contained in the Lesson-Sermon is mighty enough to protect him from all harm, and potent enough to save all who understand it.

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