Editorials

I recently had a fresh proof of how obedience to the provision of the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, the basic governing law of the Church of Christ, Scientist, actually results in healing. It happened on a Wednesday.

It is an apparently audacious, majestic, sweeping statement that Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, makes when she writes in the Message to the Mother Church for 1902: "Christian Science stills all distress over doubtful interpretations of the Bible; it lights the fires of the Holy Ghost, and floods the world with the baptism of Jesus. It is this ethereal flame, this almost unconceived light of divine Love, that heaven husbands in the First Commandment.

Once when I was flying back to Boston from London, the plane came in low from the south and we had an extraordinarily clear view of The Mother Church. The Church from this perspective appeared so established that I had the feeling it had been there forever.

In the course of doing an interview for the Christian Science Sentinel recently, I talked with a woman who has been finding that her own strong, evangelical faith enables her to work very effectively with young people. She spoke about the increased demands of the times on people who would live by spiritual inspiration and said quite straightforwardly, "The things that used to keep us spiritually twenty-five years ago will not keep us today.

In the early days of the Christian Science movement, public reaction to Christian Science often obscured the quiet but remarkable results of the Christian healing that people were experiencing. These early adherents of Christian Science were making a radical break with conventional religious beliefs and medical practices.

Suppose Church wasn't here—that Sunday and Wednesday services, Reading Rooms, Sunday Schools, lectures, college organizations, and other church activities we take for granted, weren't part of our experience. For those whose lives have been given needed substance and structure through these activities, that is unimaginable.

According to a Gallup poll, more than a few people believe in ghosts. One in four Americans who were polled say they do.

In a book called Growing Up Isn't Hard to Do if You Start Out as a Kid, the author asks kids lots of questions. Then he stands back to see what happens.

Do you recall why you became a member of the Church of Christ, Scientist? Wasn't it because you had glimpsed something of the immensity and scope of scientific Christianity as you studied Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy? And perhaps you had experienced tangible proof of the presence of God and His Christ in your life through healing.

The author makes the point that success in healing doesn't come from age or experience, but rather from "our love of God and our conviction of divine Truth's reality."