Keynote Message from the Board of Trustees of The Christian Science Publishing Society

We greatly appreciate the fact that many of you at considerable expenditure of time and money have left your accustomed duties and obligations at your individual homes to come to this Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and its affiliated activities. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has provided for all of the activities of our Church, of which this Christian Science Periodicals Fruitage Meeting is but one. The interest motivating you is not one of ambition, vainglory, place, and power, or of selfishness. It is the desire to be about our Father's business which has drawn you, one and all. Each of us has brought with him the consciousness of his own individual demonstrations of reflected light, spiritual intelligence, and power. This meeting is not a meeting of many finite human minds, but rather the gathering of an ever-expanding purpose to manifest more fully the all-inclusive divine Mind. It will continue to unfold until infinite Mind is understood and acknowledged to be the one and only Mind.

It is sometimes said that Christian Scientists have no missionaries because they have no personal ones. How far from fact such a statement is, is proved when the reading of an article in one of our periodicals and the application of its spiritual meaning heals one seemingly held in bondage either to sickness or to sin. The great difference is that our missionaries are impersonal, not personal. Our periodicals are our missionaries. They convey the message of God— Life, Truth, and Love—to the receptive ones wherever located on this globe.

This meeting deals with the past year's fruitage of the Christian Science periodicals, published by The Christian Science Publishing Society. Our Leader's thought and intent are much in evidence in the functioning of the Christian Science periodicals. She conceived them. She named them. She stated the purpose of each one. With the exception of The Christian Science Monitor, our daily newspaper, nearly all of the material of the Christian Science periodicals is from the pens of Christian Scientists, members of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Mrs. Eddy provided for the overall governing body of The Mother Church, The Christian Science Board of Directors. She established The Christian Science Publishing Society, provided for its Trustees, its Manager, its periodicals, their Editors and assistants, the production departments, and the advertising and circulation departments.

Evidently the Discoverer of Christian Science and Founder of its movement expected the Christian Science Field to subscribe for and read the Christian Science periodicals. Under the heading "Church Periodicals" in a By-Law in the Manual of The Mother Church, Article VIII, Section 14, she writes, "It shall be the privilege and duty of every member, who can afford it, to subscribe for the periodicals which are the organs of this Church; and it shall be the duty of the Directors to see that these periodicals an: ably edited and kept abreast of the times." Why did Mrs. Eddy do this? It is plain to thinkers that she was not building up a prosperous publishing business as such, but was thinking of the continuous welfare, progress, and spiritual achievement of all who accept and strive to demonstrate the spiritual revelation of Christian Science, which she discovered and gave to the world in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

Our Leader also evidently felt that each individual Christian Scientist enlists as a Christian warrior to overcome evil with good, error with Truth, fear with divine Love. She writes (Science and Health, p. 450), "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." For the guidance of Christian Scientists we find other specific directions by our Leader. In one of these, under the heading "Church Organizations Ample" in the Manual, Article VIII, Section 15, she states, "God requires our whole heart, and He supplies within the wide channels of The Mother Church dutiful and sufficient occupation for all its members."

In this morning's meeting the fruitage emanating from the activity of each one of the Christian Science periodicals of The Christian Science Publishing Society for the past year will be reviewed and evaluated. This afternoon there will be four workshop meetings, dealing with the activities of the Publishers' Agent and of The Christian Science Publishing Society. In the morning meeting and in those of this afternoon you will learn that Christian Scientists are finding "within the wide channels of The Mother Church dutiful and sufficient occupation." Christ Jesus expressed beautifully and clearly the need for more and more workers to meet the apparent human needs of mankind. He said (Matt. 9:37, 38), "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest."

After a period of silent prayer, followed by the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, the following addresses were given.

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