As I went off to graduate school full of hopes, idealism, and optimism, I suddenly found myself facing greater challenges than ever before. To begin with, I was three thousand miles from home. The graduate courses and competition were much stiffer than in undergraduate school. And though I was on a full tuition scholarship, I had to work part time to pay for my apartment and living expenses. I began to wonder if I had really followed God-given wisdom in this endeavor.

Fortunately there was a Christian Science college organization on campus. I'm sure that I owe my ultimate success in graduate school to membership in it. The college organization is really an arm of The Mother Church right there on campus. And what a supporting arm, too!

At our weekly meetings, inspiring readings from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, often brought healing light to topics especially pertinent to university students. A number of meetings stand out in my thought. At one the problem of time and pressure was addressed. The readings brought out that time is fundamentally a mental concept, and that as we spiritualize our sense of what constitutes meaningful activity, our days bring spiritual growth and progress. Members shared their experiences during the testimony portion of the meeting, explaining how they gained better control of their time by seeing more clearly that God endows man with infinite capacities for accomplishment and fulfillment. As I applied these spiritual truths in my own experience, my approach to assignments and term papers became more orderly, I made up some "incompletes," and I stayed on top of the workload.

Another topic that often came up at our meetings was intelligence. As at most universities, human, materially defined concepts of intelligence dominated the thinking on campus. Aptitude test scores and so-called IQ were supposed to be the measure of one's intelligence. I guess I'd always considered myself "bright," but I found the competition and requirements of grad school so great that pride in personal brain-centered intelligence proved wholly inadequate. So I really drank in readings on divine Mind and intelligence and began to apply what I was learning. The realization that divine intelligence is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient was extremely helpful when I was studying for and taking examinations. I'll never forget how a fellow member shared his use of this Bible citation in a testimony period: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." ^{Prov. 3:5, 6.}

Spiritual discernment, cultivated through prayer, can bring divine Mind's unerring direction to study periods and replace guesswork and confusion with organization and precision. Divine intelligence provides spiritual illumination and replaces darkness and doubt with perception, comprehension, and perspicacity. As you might guess, I prayed and worked with these truths and began doing better on my exams.

The college organization also has a great role to play in strengthening one in his or her stand for sexual morality. The student may be tempted or confused by society's loose standard of sexual morality—may be thinking, "Everybody's doing it, why shouldn't I or we?"

During my first semester of graduate school, my unmarried roommate was sleeping with her boyfriend at our apartment. When I talked to the organization advisor, he said to me, "A rose doesn't belong in an onion patch!" To me, this meant I needed to preserve the Christian standard of morality and get out of a morally obnoxious environment, which I did.

Through moral support such as this, the organization can help students understand the spiritual reasons for preserving sexual purity; for maintaining fidelity to Truth and Love; and for maintaining chastity as a premarital standard.

As part of understanding and demonstrating Spirit's control over the body in the way Jesus showed, the student can maintain his freedom from alcohol and drugs, as well as freedom from sexual temptation. It was interesting to note that two of the undergraduate girls who were organization members were chosen as campus queen finalists, and one became the winner. Clearly, their adherence to a Christian Science standard of morality did not detract from their popularity on campus or their expression of the beautiful qualities of Soul.

What if one is far from home and longs for affection and friendship? The college organization helps to bring together those of similar spiritual standards and encourages them to strengthen each other. It provides a sense of family and mutual support. Daily study of the Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly helped me to find specific citations in the Bible and Science and Health that gave me a better sense of satisfaction and completeness, replacing loneliness. Also I developed wonderful and lasting friendships with other members of our group.

Anyone who has experienced the protection and support of being a member of a college organization feels a deep sense of gratitude to Mrs. Eddy for providing for this activity in the Manual of The Mother Church. As my experience illustrates, the organizations do so much to strengthen the individual Christian Scientist and help him meet his particular challenges on campus. But that's not all organizations do. Although supporting the individual student is their primary purpose, this alone would be a rather limited role for them to fulfill. As we think about the definition of "Church" given in Science and Health, we can see that the college organization, representing, as it does, church on campus, has a vital role in elevating and uplifting academic thought on campus. The textbook of Christian Science gives this definition of "Church": "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.

"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." ^{Science and Health, p. 583.}

The university is a marketplace for ideas. How can the alert student know how to distinguish between what is detrimental and what will further his intellectual and spiritual progress?

Often courses on natural science, philosophy, and psychology are required as part of a liberal arts program, and many of these may promulgate a wholly material, biological view of man and life. The inspiration and mutual spiritual support felt in college organization meetings, combined with systematic study of the Christian Science Bible Lessons, provide a standard by which the wise Christian Scientist can separate the false from the true, fable from fact, the tares from the wheat. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Academics of the right sort are requisite. Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal." But she goes on to say, "It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we deplore,—the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction." ^{Ibid., p. 195.}

Here is where Mrs. Eddy's vision in providing for Christian Science lectures on campus fills a marvelous mission. The Manual states: "When called for, a member of the Board of Lectureship may lecture for said university or college organization." ^{Man., Art. XXIII, Sect. 8.} This provision gives the college organization an opportunity to present on campus (if permitted by the university or college rules) a lecture that can answer the scientific materialism and atheism so prevalent in the academic community.

A campus lecture raises the level of thinking on such topics as the natural sciences, the spiritual nature of man and the universe, and Christ Jesus' scientific approach to healing. In this way the Manual provision for a campus lecture helps to fulfill this statement of our Leader's in the textbook, referring to Christian Science: "Give to it the place in our institutions of learning now occupied by scholastic theology and physiology, and it will eradicate sickness and sin in less time than the old systems, devised for subduing them, have required for self-establishment and propagation." ^{Science and Health, pp. 141-142.}

The fact that faculty, instructors, and graduates also have the privilege to be organization members enables those at all levels of the academic discipline to have a role in bringing about Christly leavening of thought and in spiritualizing academic thinking. And the organization naturally has a spiritually awakening and strengthening effect on faculty and advisors as they grow in dedication and unselfishness in their support of Christian Science on campus. The provisions for campus lectures and faculty and graduate participation give two significant opportunities for the organization to embrace the entire campus community and to share the ideas of Christian Science in the marketplace of the university.

College or university Christian Science organizations have a unique role to play in strengthening the student spiritually, intellectually, and morally. But just as important, they bring an arm of church to the campus and give one the opportunity to elevate thinking and bring Christian healing to the academic community.

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

II Corinthians 3:5, 6