Many turn to Christian Science at first simply because they want relief. The heat and hurt of human existence have become too difficult. They reach out for help and healing. Of those whom Jesus healed with this Science a few thanked God, but many more turned away when their desire for mere physical relief was fulfilled.

Today men's thinking is better. Many of those helped and healed by Christian Science pursue their quest. They desire to know what it is that has touched, comforted, and improved them. Their study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook makes them discoverers of the great spiritual facts of Life. God, they find, is the one universal, always present Mind, the Life that is Principle, and man is really the individual spiritual evidence and proof of God, the individual expression of Divine Being, the son of Deity.

Sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually, the student comes to appreciate the greatness of Mrs. Eddy's discovery and its unstoppable destiny, which she states on pages 266 and 267 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" thus: "It is undoubtedly true that Christian Science is destined to become the one and the only religion and therapeutics on this planet. And why not, since Christianity is fully demonstrated to be divine Science?"

He comes to appreciate The Mother Church for the good it brings into his life, its local branch church and its services, the Reading Room, the periodicals, the lectures. He sees the importance and necessity for a well-ordered organization both to protect and to disseminate the revelation that eternal Mind declared, through its clear-minded, obedient witness. In the Manual of The Mother Church he finds how wisely and completely the same Mind that revealed its eternal Science in Science and Health provided for the worldwide establishment and activity of that Science in the consciousness of men.

As his understanding of Christian Science broadens and his love and appreciation for its Discoverer and Leader proportionately deepen, he begins to see that the Church of Christ, Scientist, is the orderly, God-sanctioned, God-ordained way for proclaiming and demonstrating the Word of God, the pure Science of Being, among men.

The question of whether he shall join The Mother Church and a branch church naturally arises in his thought. Is he ready? Is he worthy? Is he willing to share the obligations? These are some of the questions he may find in his thinking. Perhaps he has something of an aversion to joining anything. He may feel he prefers to remain aloof and apart. Possibly he has seen church members not as fully representative of Christian Science as he would wish. He may even have heard that arguments sometimes take place in church business meetings, and he wonders if he would care to belong.

But he sincerely desires to do God's will, to further the great healing purpose of eternal Love, to let his individual life come into as full at-one-ment as possible with God's revealed plan for healing, transforming and saving mankind. His individual duty to mankind becomes increasingly real to him. His honesty of purpose, and his humble desire to do his part in establishing God's kingdom among men opens his thought to Truth's answers to the evil suggestions that would rob him of the step of progress called church membership.

He comes to see that no human has yet attained perfection; that all earnest seekers for Truth are still battling with phases of false self, but he sees, too, that The Mother Church and its branches, in spite of the, as yet, undestroyed material beliefs of the members, represent the clearest and most active spiritual thinking on earth. He sees that the Christ, Truth, accepted and realized, in some degree, by the church members, is humanity's Saviour, and is, through the love and devotion of these members, being proclaimed to all mankind through the activities of The Mother Church and its branches. He realizes that his judgment should be influenced, not by the imperfections of mortals, but by the purpose of God.

If the question comes to him, What will I get out of church membership? he hears the answer of the "still small voice": Church membership is a God-given opportunity to give, not merely to get, to give of your love for God and man, to give of the intelligence and ability God has given you to help forward His healing purpose for all men. By aligning your thought and life with this church, basically His very activity, you come into fuller at-one-ment with Him, who is your Life, your All. So thinking, he renders evil inarticulate.

To let evil suggestions separate him, in belief, from church, he sees is to let error mentally wedge itself in between him and his God, for the church organization is the essential God-ordered step leading humanity on to the realization of the fullness of God, the church universal, "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Thus, step by step, the student of Christian Science finds his love and gratitude grow, his understanding of God and man expands, and he rejoices in the opportunity opening before him to join, align, unite himself with the purposeful, healing, saving activity of God exemplified in the Church of Christ, Scientist. Here, he sees, is the mightiest regenerative influence in the world today, whose divine purpose its great Founder has so clearly stated on page 583 of Science and Health: "The Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick."

To join with, work with, live for this divine agency for human beterment he joyously sees is an opportunity which only God can, and does, give; and he happily concludes that it is the highest privilege for every lover of God and His Christ Science gratefully and joyfully this opportunity to accept.

Paul Stark Seeley