All Christian Scientists, and many who are not Christian Scientists, find help and benefit beyond measure in the Wednesday evening meetings. The individual members of the congregation have opportunity during these meetings to testify to the healing power of Christian Science, and the success of the meetings is thereby dependent to a very large extent upon a proper participation on the part of the congregation. The reading from the desk is greatly beneficial, but Mrs. Eddy made the giving of "experiences, testimonies, and remarks on Christian Science" (Manual, p. 122) a vital part of the meeting. Indeed, the testimonies that are given serve to illustrate how the spiritual facts heard from the desk, discerned and applied to everyday experience, correct whatever is apparently out of harmony with these facts.
There is not a person who has had the privilege of attending these midweek meetings who would not feel the deepest sense of deprivation were the testimonies excluded from the hour. Such an exclusion is of course impossible, as our Leader has provided a definite place in the meetings for testimonies; but the supposition serves to make us realize how vital to all is this element so wisely provided by Mrs. Eddy. Testimonies of healing are helpful to every one. They cannot fail to encourage and strengthen those who have undertaken, as their life work, to combat with the truth of Christian Science the hidden forces of evil, expressed in disease and sin. The beginner, hesitating and afraid, through listening to the experience of one who in some great crisis has been healed by divine Truth, loses his fear and finds courage to trust in divine power. There is also the stranger within our gates, who comes almost wholly for the testimonies; he may come merely out of curiosity, or he may come because he is weary and heavy-laden and has been told that he will hear at this meeting the proofs of healing he so earnestly seeks.
In the congregation are many who have experienced healing that the stranger knows nothing about, countless proofs, just such as he is longing for. How needful it is that he should hear from the congregation the blessed truth of spiritual healing! If the testimonies are few, with long pauses between, the stranger will probably leave with the thought that Christian Scientists have not so many more blessings than other people after all. The congregation has failed to give that proof of its gratitude and love which Jesus required of Peter in his tender commission, "Feed my lambs." Think of the different effect when the stranger finds quick and spontaneous gratitude such as is almost always evident in our annual Thanksgiving service. Christian Scientists have reason to be grateful every moment of their lives, and if there is an opportunity to let their light shine at any time during the year, that time should be joyfully utilized. The responsibility for the right use of this time is not with the Directors, not with the practitioners, not even with the church members, exclusively, but it rests upon every one who has been healed by Christian Science.
