MIDWEEK TESTIMONIES

CHARLES B. MAYS

The Wednesday testimony meeting in The Mother Church and in its branches is a fruitage meeting. Here students, their hearts filled with joy and gratitude to God for their blessings, bring their offerings. These midweek meetings are also opportunities for workers in all degrees of unfoldment to learn more of God's dear love. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 12, 13): "In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as 'a very present help in trouble.' Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.'"

Through many years the writer had drunk from the open fount of living waters of Truth as revealed by Christian Science. He therefore earnestly desired to testify to divine healing at these Wednesday meetings. However, meeting after meeting went by, and he would leave the church somewhat crestfallen because he had not testified. While speaking with an experienced worker in Christian Science about this problem he was told to do daily protective work for the midweek meeting. In pondering this offered solution the writer asked himself, From what do the meetings need protection? He got his answer: Protection from the false belief of opposition to divine healing in Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 224): "The modern lash is less material than the Roman scourage, but it is equally as cutting. Cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition from church, state laws, and the press, are still the harbingers of truth's full-orbed appearing." On the same page we further read: "The power of God brings deliverance to the captive. No power can withstand divine Love." Here is outlined what sometimes seems to frustrate the desire to testify.

Basing his prayer on the statement, "No power can withstand divine Love," the writer worked diligently to unsee the belief of a resisting force, a so-called opponent called "cold disdain, stubborn resistance, opposition from church, state laws, and the press." He reasoned that since Love recognizes no opposition, because there is no opposite to infinite God, His creation, man, cannot cognize or fear such a belief. He also reasoned that since Church is a divine idea in Mind, it cannot be contaminated by thoughts of human resistance. "There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie" (Rev. 21:27).

The important need for one's arousing himself to wrestle mentally with his belief in a so-called force opposite to Love and to subdue it is emphasized in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy says (p. 569), "Every mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God."

The belief in a power or creation opposite to God implies faith in the reality of an opposer. Nothing from within or without scientific thought opposes the omnipotence of God.

We protect the testimony meetings by realizing that there is no opposite and no opposer, because God has not created an idea opposite to the divine idea of Church as manifested in Christian Science. That which cannot be traced to God as its source is not created, possesses no form, shape, or color, and is not a person, place, or thing.

At the following Wednesday evening meeting, when the First Reader extended the invitation to give testimonies, the writer was on his feet; it seemed as though he were literally pulled from his seat. It has since been his joy and pleasure to testify to divine Love's presence and power in the Wednesday meetings, always knowing that "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (John 5:19).

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