Editorial October 22, 1938 Issue

Constructive Thoughts on Church Membership

Violet Ker Seymer

Nowhere is the spirit of truth and love more indispensable than in our branch churches, for as true brotherhood is demonstrated in the Christian Science organization the spirit of unity, the unity of Spirit, will awaken and unify the nations of the world.

In his first epistle Peter wrote, "Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." In their eagerness to see their church progress, church members sometimes feel regretful when prosperity and unity are not apparent in their midst. Casting around for the reason, they may be tempted to believe that the trouble comes mostly through certain members. Should they entertain this view, they would be forgetting their own obligation as witnesses to God and man. Primarily, the deceiving, disrupting error is mortal mind and not persons. Evil is no part of church, nor yet of church member—taking member in the high and holy sense in which membership is to be regarded. Church and church member are to be seen as one, entirely apart from discord, whatever form it may assume, and always under the government of divine Principle. From this standpoint, members can expose and frustrate the attempt of error to veil from them the fact of the everlasting oneness of Mind and its ideas.

In his letter to the members of the church at Ephesus Paul wrote, "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another." In the unity of good, which is everlastingly established and maintained by divine Principle and the operation of spiritual law, there is no element of division or disintegration. Staunchly holding to this stabilizing fact, members will resist the tendency to become either fearful or resentful when what are called church problems arise and it seems necessary on occasions to take sides. On page 10 of "Christian Healing" we find eloquent statements by our Leader on the subject of siding with good, since in reality there is no other side.

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