Article July 17, 1943 Issue

Our Periodicals

By Paul Stark Seeley,

The Mother Church lives in the affections of its members. There, too, live its periodicals. How vitally important the periodicals are to the purposes of our movement is shown by our great Leader, who, at possibly one of the busiest periods of her busy life, took upon herself for several years the exacting duties of sole editor and publisher of The Christian Science Journal. It was she who broke the ground and planted the roots.

Her letters to the early editors impress on them and their successors, in no uncertain terms, the necessity for making the periodicals refreshing, inspiring, and scientifically correct in their every statement of Christian Science. She once humorously observed in one of her inimitable phrases that we should watch not to let "paralytic piety.... puttyize our periodicals." (From the Historical Files of The Mother Church—Mrs. Eddy's comment on editorial in Sentinel of September 21, 1899.)

It is, of course, the sincere desire of the present editors to do what our Leader expects us to do. And to this end we need your continuing co-operation. The periodicals must have subscribers, readers, contributors, as well as editors. Many more Christian Scientists can become subscribers and readers. By so doing they align their thought more fully with God, and God's own saving plan for humanity. A Christian Scientist subscribes not merely for what he gets from the periodicals, although we wish him to get full value and much more. But primarily he subscribes because he wishes to give, to give to these messengers of Christ the support our Leader asked, in the Manual, each Christian Scientist to give, that they may fulfill their God-appointed mission to help spiritualize human consciousness and hasten the coming of God's kingdom among men.