AS they are published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, The Christian Science Journal, the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Heralds of Christian Science, all may be regarded as gifts from God, through Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Gracious and precious gifts they are, for they afford a rightly ordered way by which the students of Christian Science may voice something of their growing knowledge of Christian Science, and express their gratitude for what it is bringing to mankind.
The periodicals, it is understood, fill a different place in the Christian Science movement from that occupied by the writings of Mrs. Eddy. The writings of our Leader record the revelation to her of divine Truth, and set forth the divine laws of being which, applied to human experience, demonstrate God's presence and power. In conjunction with the Holy Scriptures, our Leader's writings are destined to lead the ages on to eventual deliverance from all evil. The periodicals record what the students of Christian Science learn, and how they succeed in their efforts to demonstrate this revealed Truth and to obey the laws of God, which so surely save and heal.
The periodicals had their inception in divine guidance, as did the Scriptures and the writings of Mrs. Eddy. Interwoven with the fabric of The Mother Church, as it presents Christian Science to the world, they have their rightful place and work. These monthly, weekly, and daily messengers sprang in natural sequence from the necessary unfoldment of Christian Science, and were ordered by the spiritual vision of our Leader, who foresaw their place and mission. Thus the periodicals, while they are subordinate to Mrs. Eddy's writings, were born of her inspiration, and through divine guidance she gave them their place in the Christian Science movement. The periodicals are vehicles for carrying forward the record of demonstration on the part of those who follow the teaching of Christian Science. They are continuing witnesses to God's power among men. As such they are entitled to and logically must have, in their own place and for their own purpose, the support of Christian Scientists' understanding of the government and the protection of God.
We may conclude, in the light of this understanding, that the periodicals of the Christian Science movement are divinely maintained. We may at the same time, however, need to ask ourselves what our relation to them should be. There can be only one answer, and that is that in the field of our mental receptivity to them, these periodicals find their place. In the field of the world's receptivity, they do their work. Their life-giving messages spring out of individual understanding of Truth. The Scriptures say of God's compassions, they are "new every Morning," but unless they are received in human thought they cannot help and redeem.
Supporting the periodicals is a question of receptivity and reciprocity. Subscribers and readers are as necessary as are editors and contributors. The periodicals live in the affections and lives of those who welcome them and give heed to their messages. Our receptivity to the truth they convey is a vital part of their success. Their well-being depends upon our love for them and upon our circulation of them. So, in order to carry them forward, we must bring to them our affection, our good will, our devoted enthusiasm. Doing this, we complete the transaction, if it may be so put, by preparing thought to receive the good they express.
The Christian Scientist knows, further, that his fundamental support of the periodicals comes from his own obedience to God, divine Mind, who protects and governs all that concerns the Christian Science movement. When men come to comprehend Christian Science, they begin to express spiritual truths and spiritual qualities in their own thinking. This expression of spiritual intelligence constitutes what Mrs. Eddy has called the reflection of divine Mind. Thus the students of Christian Science, understanding that the real man reflects divine Mind, express wisdom, purity, fidelity, faith, and goodness, which increasingly actuate them. And, this being true, they must also reflect the divine power which supports all rightly ordained ways for bringing the true understanding of God to men. Thus the Christian Science periodicals go forward in and through the demonstrable understanding of the Christian Scientists, who rightly love and cherish them.
It may be said in the last analysis that true support of the periodicals does more than receive them: it gives them. We do not subscribe to them solely for our own good. We may give a little money to support them as an activity of The Mother Church, but we must spend our love to uphold and carry forward our Leader's gift. Primarily, we as Christian Scientists do not merely "take" the periodicals —we give them to the world. We support them just as we support Reading Rooms, church services, lectures, and just as we let love and gratitude erect church buildings. The periodicals are Mrs. Eddy's gift— and our gift—to humanity.
The mission of the periodicals is universal: they are for all mankind. Therefore, because all mankind is to be reached by them, we must never cease our support of them. The work of leavening human thought with divine revelation has begun, and at no point can it stop. Take, for example, the circulation of The Christian Science Monitor. Its first appearing can be likened to the thin edge of a wedge, pressing into the newspaper reading field of human thought. The reading of the Monitor is telling upon the world's belief in evil. The Monitor's constant testimony to the good expressed in the world is pressing upon the claims of evil in the world; and this will continue until the bulk and weight of the good thus brought into thought eventually overbears the evil. The momentum of good, its ever multiplying weight and power, is presented by the Monitor to the newspaper reading world. And who can measure the good already done, the good yet to be done? Every added subscription, every bit of loving enthusiasm, every kindly effort to have newspaper and reader meet, adds weight, bulk, power, momentum, to the activity of recognized good. It must tell rapidly upon the trouble and sorrow of the world, and day by day lessen it.
The Christian Science Monitor enters many homes at their newspaper reading point, satisfying the human interest in news with that which is of "good report." Easily we can picture the different world we should have were the Monitor, or papers somewhat like it in their exclusion of the sordid and the unclean, read every morning and by every evening fireside. Take away much of the subject matter of the well-known sensational dailies, and substitute therefor vital, constructive good, such as is reported in the Monitor, and there would be subtracted from human thought much of the fear and sin which manifest themselves in sickness. There would be builded, instead, much moral and physical health. Present to the world a newspaper minus crime and disaster, and little by little must ensue a state of consciousness minus crime and disaster, a state of thought readier to receive good in all its ways.
Mrs. Eddy says of Christian Scientists, on page 39 of "Miscellaneous Writings," that their "medicine is divine Mind;" and she adds that "from this saving, exhaustless source they intend to fill the human mind with enough of the leaven of Truth to leaven the whole lump." What can spread this leaven of Truth better than the printed page, which can reach thousands upon thousands daily?
It is clear that as this leavening goes on the task of the individual Christian Scientist will be enormously lightened. In the practice of Christian Science the general health and happiness, the harmony of business and of the home, will be easier to maintain, as the bulk of materialistic thinking thins under the enlightenment which comes from this continual insistence upon good. A herald will have gone before to prepare a place for the seed of Christian healing. The evil suggestion of the world is one evil, and its nothingness is proved by every spiritual touch. The circulation of the Christian Science periodicals is disintegrating this one belief in evil as real as no one could do it singly, as no single group could do it. So all mankind is bound together in the blessing which comes through the ever growing circulation of these messengers of good.
It is obviously true that the Christian Science periodicals can circulate only to the degree that mental resistance to them is destroyed. It is also evident that the lethargy, the indifference, the leaning to evil in human thought, combine to make the only enemy which can seem to stay the influence of these witnesses for good. Lethargy and indifference are not the innocent conditions they may seem to be. They are the outcome of the deeper aggression in the world, the carnal mind which Jesus designated as a murderer, and which, in order to continue its delusions, is ever ready to block the coming of Christ, Truth. The Christian Scientist, therefore, challenges any luke-Warmness in his own thinking. He knows that there must be no halfway position. He adds his weight to the wedge of truth through loving and supporting his periodicals. And so he does his part in overcoming world resistance to the truth which Christian Science has brought to mankind.
Like the Scriptures and our Leader's writings, each in their place, the periodicals also come as the angels of the Lord. To them Christian Scientists bring their love and enthusiasm, their eager faith, their devoted efforts. The maintenance of their circulation and distribution speeds them on their saving way.
The periodicals are held under the government of divine Love as Christian Scientists themselves recognize and submit to the government of divine Love; and in this field of affection and labor the periodicals are fulfilling their uplifting and healing purpose for all mankind.
