The writer was particularly interested in the following statement contained in the clerk's report of the annual meeting of The Mother Church, June 8, 1912 (Sentinel, p. 804): "There has been much to indicate that the year's growth and development have been largely due to an increased understanding on the part of Christian Scientists of their individual responsibility,—a clearer realization that the problems, both of the individual and of our church organizations, can only be solved through the impersonal, unselfish demonstration of God's unerring guidance."
It often happens that when one first comes to Christian Science for healing, he is so busily engaged in trying to solve his own problems that the larger sense of Christian Science and what it is doing for mankind does not at once present itself to his consciousness; but through the study of Science and Health and our other literature, the desire comes to be identified with this great movement, and the next step is to join the church. Even then one sometimes is a little hazy as to just what use he can be to the cause; but when the human consciousness at last awakes to its individual responsibility as a member of this church, great growth in the understanding of Christian Science must ensue.
The individual then perceives that the responsibility of the church does not rest alone upon the Board of Directors or upon those who are called the active workers, but it also rests upon each individual member to bring out the right idea of church. Mrs. Eddy gives us the true definition of church on page 583 of Science and Health, and from this we cannot help seeing that the growth, prosperity, and activity of the church increase in proportion as the individualities constituting it are awake and each is demonstrating the true idea in his own consciousness.
