For one hundred and ten years the pages of the Journal have been enriched by the insights, spiritual guidance, thoughtful warnings, and inspiration of Christian ministers.
Though she founded a Church with no clergy, Mary Baker Eddy's early appreciation for dedicated ministers only deepened as the decades passed. She found in their words—and, even more, in their lives—practical evidence of what it meant to follow Christ. Toward the end of her long life, she recalled—with something far deeper than nostalgia—the Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist clergymen and elders she had known in her youth: "God seemed to shield the whole world in their hearts, and they were willing to renounce all for Him. . . . They fill the ecclesiastic measure, that to love God and keep His commandments is the whole duty of man" (Message to The Mother Church for 1901).
We recently spoke with two ministers, and we very much appreciate their willingness to have excerpts from their forthright and wide-ranging comments published in this issue of the Journal.
