Article May 2, 1942 Issue

True Worship

EMMA EASTON NEWMAN

A Serious student of music fits himself for greater enjoyment in attending the rendition of a great symphony by earnest study of the score. The parts assigned to each instrument in the development of the movements are intelligently analyzed. This study may be wholly mental and carried on without the striking of a note; but, finally, the student attends the performance and listens to the grand orchestration of the whole composition. That which he has studied in detail becomes entirely co-ordinated. This illustration may be helpful to some who have lately become attracted to Christian Science through healing, and yet do not quite understand why Christian Scientists both study the weekly Bible Lessons provided by the Christian Science Quarterly and also attend the Sunday services, where the same Lesson is read from the platform.

Throughout the week the study is carried on daily and prayerfully The student reverently realizes that he is listening to the voice of God coming to him through His witnesses from the time of Moses, to whom God "spake ... face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exodus 33:11), and from before the time of Moses, to this our day, when the final revelation of the Science of Christianity has come through its Discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy. Of the wonderful dawning of this revelation she herself has written (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 27), "As sweet music ripples in one's first thoughts of it like the brooklet in its meandering midst pebbles and rocks, before the mind can duly express it to the ear,—so the harmony of divine Science first broke upon my sense, before gathering experience and confidence to articulate it."

Does this not beautifully indicate also the process by which each week at the first reading of the Lesson an intuitive sense of its harmonies ripples in one's thought and later gathers momentum and definition as it becomes more articulate through each day's perusal? As the symphony is developed through its several movements into a unified whole, so the Lesson presents six aspects of the one subject. These aspects become more evident in an ascending scale as the study progresses throughout the week. One of Mrs. Eddy's biographers has characterized our congregations as "student worshipers". Even in the largest congregations one cannot fail to notice both the quietness which prevails and the attention given to the reading. The much-studied Lesson-Sermon will contain no surprises in statement for this body of "student worshipers," but they are on the alert for fresh unfoldments as they listen to the continuous flow of the inspired words of their textbooks, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy.

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