THE thought of our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, was wonderfully close to the Love which "inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 454) when she instituted the Wednesday evening testimony meetings. Through Love's illumination she must have caught glorious visions of the immeasurable good that would result from them. To gain some concept of those visions, amply realized, one need only look into his own experience relative to these meetings. As he does so, he surely will find occasion for much rejoicing; and as he recalls some of the numberless ways in which they have blessed him, he may be surprised to find in his consciousness less criticism and faultfinding, and more patience, forbearance, and sympathy, less selfishness and more selflessness, brotherly love, and unity, with true meekness and humility much more abounding.
To stop here, though in itself a rich justification for the meetings, would be to miss the yet higher mission our beloved Leader had in thought for them, as we discover by turning to the Manual of The Mother Church (p. 47), where we read: "Testimony in regard to the healing of the sick is highly important. More than a mere rehearsal of blessings, it scales the pinnacle of praise and illustrates the demonstration of Christ, 'who healeth all thy diseases.'" Here, then, surely is the central purpose of these meetings— to illustrate "the demonstration of Christ." Hereby we are brought into close touch with the message Jesus asked the disciples of John the Baptist to take to him when he sent to Jesus to inquire if he were the Messiah. The message was, "Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." The purport of that wonderful reply of Jesus was apparently lost in the religious mist of the ages following, until restored at the coming of Christian Science. Our beloved Leader has greatly enriched the lives of Christian Scientists by providing, through the Wednesday evening testimony meetings, precious opportunities for taking up the import of that message to John, and telling the world that the Christ as revealed by Christian Science is again repeating the healing works.
Christian Scientists rejoice that they are both the messengers and the beneficiaries of those works— yea, and in some measure the doers of them also. They are humble and happy in making this claim, remembering that Jesus told his followers that they could and should do works similar to those he did, thereby establishing healing as a sacred privilege. It is an inspiring thought, that every Christian Scientist is privileged to be one of the great army of messengers carrying that wondrous message to the Wednesday evening testimony meetings in all parts of the civilized world, even in the vicinity of those same Judean hills where, centuries ago, John's disciples were commissioned to carry it. Those messengers were only eyewitnesses; to-day the messengers are also beneficiaries.
