In some parts of the field there appears to be a tendency toward making the qualifications for branch church membership so rigid and severe as to be almost prohibitive. Worthy applicants are summoned to appear before an examining board or membership committee and put through a course of questioning so rigorous and exacting as to make the experience an ordeal so trying that it is contemplated with dread rather than welcomed with gladness. As a result, many prefer to remain unattached who are wholly eligible, and who should not find confronting them a barrier difficult to cross when they are ready to become members of a Christian Science church. They need what the church can give them, and the church needs what they can bring to it.
While the motives of those in charge of the examination of candidates for admission to our churches are commendable, their methods are often open to improvement. It is a mistake so to surround the occasion with an atmosphere of severity that it suggests a trial at court or a civil service examination. To ask a candidate how he would handle this or that error, to pry into his inmost thoughts about things that are sacred to him, or to question him on abstruse metaphysical interpretations, is to cross the line of propriety and possibly to enter the field of personal opinion.
It is of much greater consequence to make sure that the applicant is seeking to serve God than to uncover his ignorance about some particular passage in our textbook. His motive for joining should always be first ascertained and, if found worthy, unselfish, and commendable, and if he has gained entire freedom from other church affiliations, the rest of the way should not be made hard for him. It should always be remembered that Jesus imposed as a fundamental qualification for membership in the glorious company of those who had enlisted under the banner of the first and great commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself."
