Editorial November 27, 1995 Issue

What standing are we pursuing?

William E. Moody

"Quietly, without a trace of fanaticism, making their remarkable statements with a simplicity which sprang from the conviction that they would be believed, scores of Christian Scientists told of cures from diseases, physical and mental, at the testimony meetings that marked the close of their visit to Boston; cures that carried one back to the age of miracles. To hear prosperous, contented men and women, people of substance and of standing, earnestly assure thousands of auditors that they had been cured of blindness, of consumption in its advanced stages, of heart disease, of cancer; that they had felt no pain when having broken bones set; that when wasted unto death they had been made whole, constituted a severe tax upon frail human credulity, yet they were believed....

"Those who poured out their debts of gratitude for ills cured, for hearts lifted up, spoke simply and gratefully, but occasionally the voices would ring out in a way there was no mistaking. In those people was the depth of sincerity ...."

These words are excerpted from the Boston Herald's account, in June 1906, of the first Wednesday testimony meeting held at the newly completed and just dedicated Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist.^{The full article is reprinted in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 79–82 .} People from around the world had gathered in Boston for the occasion and were eager to tell how they had been healed in body and regenerated morally and spiritually. They knew in their hearts that the healing power of God had been revealed for all mankind through the discovery of Christian Science. This was something so wonderful that they simply could not keep it to themselves. The good news—the message of Christ-healing—must be shared with any and all who were willing to hear. It's worth noting that in both the opening paragraph of the Herald article, as quoted above, and its closing paragraph, the newspaper characterized those testifying as men and women of "standing."