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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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August 7, 1943 issue
View Issue-
The Serviceman: a Modern Disciple
W. NORMAN COOPER
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Jesus, the Way-shower
MARGARET GERALDINE GODEFROI
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"Over continent and ocean"
HOWARD J. CHAMBERS
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"Allied to the deific power"
EDITH PRUDDEN
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Keeping Our Lamps Lighted
EMMA V. HAINERT
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Safety
JUNE BARR
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The Eighth and Ninth Beatitudes
ANN PUTCAMP
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Obedience
ROBERT ELLIS KEY
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Homesickness Can Be Conquered!
John Randall Dunn
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Shortening the Distance
Paul Stark Seeley
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Introductions to Lectures
with contributions from Franklin Howard Pike, Marguerite J. Smith, Harold Algernon Lannamann, Minnie Thorogood, Beatrice Forsyth, Eugene F. Fish
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Special attention has been drawn...
Guy Haldane Dempster
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There is much good to be derived...
James Harry McReynolds
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Repentance
OPAL WINSTEAD
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Because I have studied Christian Science...
Lily M. Parham
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With gratitude and love for all...
Marion L. Vanderhurst
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That Christian Science heals,...
John E. Clark
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I have so often derived inspiration...
Minnie V. Parker
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I began to smoke tobacco when...
Henry A. Spielman
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When I was just beginning to...
Louise B. Nichols with contributions from DeLois Nichols Tibbets
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For some time now I have been...
Alice Fist with contributions from Selma Nelson
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Wings
LILLIAN D. MINES
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Signs of the Times
with contributions from Norman L. Foote, Dorothy Thompson, Charles D. Trexler