Keeping Our Lamps Lighted

In the Christian Science Sentinel for February 22, 1941, there appeared in the "Signs of the Times" columns a translated reprint from "Ralliemont, Lausanne, Switzerland," which told of a traveler's arrival one Sunday evening in a little village where old traditions were still preserved. He found worshipers on their way to church, each carrying a little bronze lamp of ancient design. He joined them and found that each one lighted his lamp at a torch at the church entrance. Inquiry revealed that this church, built in 1550, had never had any lights, and that the little bronze lamps belonged to the church. They were lent to the people, and for nearly four hundred years had been carried to evening services. The traveler learned also that there was seldom anyone absent from a service, because everyone's lamp was needed to brighten the church.

Each one of us is needed in our churches to bring to the service the spiritual illumination which truly lights the church. If our church is to perform the healing and saving functions for which it was founded, there must be a lamp of love burning continually in every heart.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 510, 511) our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says: "Light is a symbol of Mind, of Life, Truth, and Love, and not a vitalizing property of matter. Science reveals only one Mind, and this one shining by its own light and governing the universe, including man, in perfect harmony." Man, being the reflection of Mind, expresses this divine light continually. But the human consciousness must come to recognize this fact through spiritualization of thought. Our work is to keep alive in our thought a constant, conscious consecration to divine Mind, so that the light which comes to us from God may ever burn brightly and not be hid by the clouds of material sense. Was not this what Christ Jesus meant when he said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Ye are the light of the world," and, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven"?

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