Article July 12, 1941 Issue

Christian Science Reading Rooms

By Miss Violet Ker Seymer

In our churches we hear this message read from the desk: "All are cordially invited to visit our Reading Room." What is it that issues this invitation and promises this welcome? It is The Mother Church. What is it that truly hears and responds to it? It is the awakening of spiritual sense in individual consciousness.

Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has provided the Christian Science Reading Room as a sanctuary for prayerful study. In the Church Manual (Art. XXV, Sect. 7) she safeguards the Reading Room by providing that "no objectionable pictures shall be exhibited in the rooms where the Christian Science textbook is published or sold. No idle gossip, no slander, no mischief-making, no evil speaking shall be allowed." It is comparatively easy to avoid these errors in their visible and audible forms. Our vital need is to exclude them from our consciousness so that no false mental pictures, no slanderous material beliefs, shall becloud our vision of perfect God and perfect man, indivisible, ever present.

A librarian listened keenly for some idea or statement which would bless those coming to the Reading Room. Immediately she recalled the words of our Leader in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 254): "Stranger, thou art the guest of God." She realized that "the guest of God" responds to the unique attraction of Spirit, expresses the freedom of Truth, and the harmony of divine Love. "The guest of God" reflects God, infinite good.

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