Our Opportunity

Albert F. Gilmore

Frequently, it seems, Christian Scientists pay too little attention to the important fact that as disciples of Christ Jesus, and as loyal followers of Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, they are engaged in true Christian ministry, the highest and holiest of all service. "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death," Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 450), through devoting himself to the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, the kingdom of righteousness and love. How foreign in its purpose is such a mission to the motives, aims, and desires which in general actuate the activities of mankind!

The individual who, through the remedial and regenerative power of the Christ, Truth, has felt its healing touch, and in consequence is an earnest student of Christian Science, is bound to take up, in some phase or both for himself and for others the ministry of spiritual healing. Above all else he is desirous of spreading the gospel of Truth, of sharing with all who are athirst the living waters from which he has so copiously drunk. He therefore becomes an active agent in the promotion of the Cause in which he has enlisted, a Cause having for its purpose the noblest of missions, the healing of mankind of sin and disease and the bringing to humanity of redemption and salvation. A holy Cause, all will agree,—indeed, the holiest,—which may well command our highest consecration, our deepest devotion!

While all, to be sure, may not be engaged directly in healing the sick, yet all who are giving their service to any feature of the work entailed in carrying on the Christian Science movement should recognize the deep significance of their activities. In the historical sketch which appears in the Manual of The Mother Church (p. 17), relative to the purpose for which the Church of Christ, Scientist, was founded, we find these significant words: "To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." No church could be founded for a more sacred purpose; none could be more firmly founded upon the Rock, Christ. Every worker, then, Christian Science movement has part in commemorating the ministry of Christ Jesus, and in reinstating primitive Christianity.

No member of this church and no adherent to the Tenets of Christian Science need ever feel that this Cause is inadequate to command his best capabilities. The field of work is the whole world, for all mankind seeks redemption; and the time is the present. None can witness the wants of mankind without being convinced of the urgent demands for immediate relief from the seeming claims of materiality which so completely encomapass humanity. Christ Jesus was tremendously impressed with the urgent need of relief in his own day. In sending forth the seventy disciples to engage in the demonstration of spiritual power to heal, he said to them, "The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest." Shall we conclude that the Master would judge the demand for laborers in God's vineyard less urgent now than then? The teeming millions of earth may have thrown off something of the shackles of materiality in the intervening centuries; but how great still is the need!

The ministry of Christian Science offers the greatest of all opportunities for service. None can wish for a holier Cause, a more sacred calling. Sometimes it seems those not at the post of greatest responsibility in the movement, and not directly engaged either in an official capacity or in teaching or healing the sick, may look upon the particular work at which they are employed as lacking in opportunity for highest Christian service. They may think of their work as a job rather than as Christian ministry, a point of view which is corrected through gaining a more spiritual concept of our Leader's teachings. The janitor who cares for the church edifice, whose faithful service keeps clean and ready for occupancy the house of God; the attendant at the Reading Room, who finds constantly by his own right thinking the opportunity to assist the seeker for Truth; the worker in the Publishing House, be he bookkeeper, stenographer, or printer, who has seen his task as a necessary activity in the symmetrical whole of the Christian Science movement, will render service the spiritual significance of which will be exactly in proportion to his right concept of service. These workers may be true Christian disciples precisely in proportion as they are thinking in terms of Spirit or matter. Through the vision of the healing Christ, the lowliest labor or the highest, wherever carried on, under whatsoever conditions, if performed in the spirit of and in obedience to our Leader's teachings may become the holiest service. Our mental attitude is the determining factor.

Shall we not, then, endeavor to approach in some degree the splendid idealism of our Leader when she writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 177), "Never was there a more solemn and imperious call than God makes to us all, right here, for fervent devotion and an absolute consecration to the greatest and holiest of all causes"? Surely the field is white for the harvest, and blessed are they who take part in gathering the sheaves of spiritual truth, which in their fullness await the true harvester; and in sowing again the good seed thus garnered on the fertile ground prepared to receive it.

Albert F. Gilmore

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The Power of a Right Thought

June 12, 1926

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