Article June 16, 1945 Issue

The Lesson-Sermon

HELEN MARY ROLLESTON

The Lesson-Sermon read on Sunday in Christian Science churches throughout the world has a special function in its unifying effect on those who study it. It is generally known that the Lesson-Sermons consist of selections from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and that the sermon read each Sunday is outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly and is everywhere the same. Thus, week after week, all over the world, people widely dissimilar in race, occupation, and outlook are studying the same citations from the Bible and Science and Health, employed to explain and elucidate the same foundational subject.

It comes about, therefore, that daily we have a common purpose among us—that of finding out the meaning of the same words of Jesus, or the same declaration of the nature of God by Psalmist or prophet. We read the same Scriptural passages indicating the operation of divine Mind in human affairs. We study the same inspired statements of Science and Health, showing the everyday application of the Bible texts to human life, and their healing efficacy is becoming familiar to Christian Scientists in all parts of the world. "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies," says the Psalmist (Ps. 23: 5), and the Lesson-Sermon may be likened to this table round which gather daily a great family of all ages and degrees of understanding, to partake of the same food—a heavenly manna of infinite capacity to nourish and sustain. No favoritism here, no privilege or seniority! The most experienced Christian Scientist on earth today and the most recent soldier to stray into a Rest Room or Reading Room to read the Lesson-Sermon for the first time have exactly the same portion before them.

The nourishment they obtain is, of course, in proportion to their readiness to take in and to assimilate the truth therein. But who is to say that this last-come inquirer, this youngest child at the table, with his profound hunger and thirst, his confidence in the food provided, shall not experience as much good as that gained by his elder brothers and sisters?

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