Toward the close of his task of revealing and demonstrating the truth of being, by overcoming for himself and others the claims of the flesh, Christ Jesus gave to his followers the command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." He had proved spiritual power to be superior to the claims of mortal mind, in its various evidences of sin and disease and in its medical, religious, and political systems. He did his work for himself and others by knowing the Father and the son, divine Mind and its idea, man. He made no attempt to enter into human organizations for the purpose of healing the maladies of the world. He used no influence to overthrow the Roman government or to restore the Jewish kingdom. With ease he paid the tribute money, and directed men's thoughts to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of spiritual thinking, wherein is realized the government of God, maintaining the unbroken harmony of real being. He was brought by his enemies before the Roman procurator, in the judgment hall, where through his meekness he justified the divinity which he declared and lived. In the face of these things he knew the truth, leaving human modes to their own eventual dissolution before the allness of divine Mind.
Christ Jesus made it clear that in their destined work of saving the world, proving the reality and supremacy of good, his followers could be victorious over the resistance of materiality only as they followed him in the way he taught; and the import of his teaching indicates no other possible way of salvation for the individual or for the world. He declared to his disciples on what basis he founded his church, against which no evil should prevail. And through the centuries immediately succeeding his ministry, so long as the early church adhered to the pure spirituality of his teachings and manifested its power, it had its influence on the lives of increasing numbers of individuals, and thus on general affairs. When, little by little, it received into itself the darkening influence of materiality, that is, when it became absorbed in material ways and means, temporarily it lost its God-bestowed power, and the world lost this saving influence, the spiritual influence bestowed upon Christianity to be wielded for the world through regenerating individual lives.
Nevertheless, despite the mental state of humanity in these dark centuries, the leaven of Truth was never wholly lost from the world. Always there remained the remnant, the few here and there who, remembering that the truth had been revealed through Christ Jesus, sought and found its light; and the historical periods of Christian revival, enlightenment, and advancement variously attested the presence of the leavening truth, the influence of the Christ. "Ages pass," writes Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 118), "but this leaven of Truth is ever at work." No one, then, need despair of his own healing or of the eventual healing of the world, for the leaven of Truth, as it is declared in the same passage, "must destroy the entire mass of error, and so be eternally glorified in man's spiritual freedom."
It was Truth, perpetually leavening Truth, enlightening, inspiring, and fructifying her search for the way Christ Jesus disclosed and proved, that led Mrs. Eddy to the God-illumined summit of discovery which eventuated in her great gift to the world of Christian Science, the Science which Jesus revealed, utilized, and taught others to apply, the Science whereby alone the world is to be saved. And this glorious consummation is to be realized through the redemption of individuals in ever-increasing numbers from belief in materiality as having attraction, power, duration—reality.
Mrs. Eddy, herself following Christ Jesus in the way, discovering through divine illumination the Science of his teaching, was led of God to give to the world the spiritual meaning of Church, as Jesus revealed it, and to organize for the use of men in tracing the Christly way the institutional church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. In The Mother Church, including all its activities, its branch churches, lectures, periodicals, is set before men the means whereby individuals, and hence the world, can be liberated from materiality—hate, greed, war, disaster, death—through the application of Christian Science in individual thinking, thus helping to heal community, national, and world maladies.
Mrs. Eddy's teachings and her divinely directed provisions in the Manual for the perpetual conduct of her Church and its activities make the demand upon the adherents of Christian Science that Christ Jesus made, namely, spiritualization of thought, through which alone the individual can do effectual work for himself and others, for his community, for his native land, and for the world. There is no place wherein the Christian Scientist can think healingly for himself and for mankind but in his own consciousness. Herein must be achieved true reform, the spiritually mental work which saves.
Since this Church with its organized activities and its influence encircles the world, every Christian Scientist, through scientific prayer, can continuously go "into all the world" and know the truth about all things that come within his view. Our daily newspaper is one means provided by Mrs. Eddy whereby Christian Scientists and others are being informed of world conditions and activities which call for the Christianly scientific knowing of God's supremacy. Each can pray daily and sincerely, as in the words of Hezekiah, "Thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth;" and of Jehoshaphat, "O Lord God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee?" And as we become "singers unto the Lord" and "praise the beauty of holiness," as did those who were appointed to do so following this latter prayer, we too shall see the enemies of harmony defeated.
There can be no more universal recognition of God's power than that of His allness, and His supremacy even in all the world's kingdoms, parliaments, and congresses. And in knowing this truth for the world the Christian Scientist will know it more clearly in his own individual experience; for the problem of salvation through Christ is one problem, individual and universal. As we help ourselves through realization of the universality of Mind, we are helping the world in the only way possible to the individual, for the mental work of knowing the truth about world problems is done through individual spiritual thinking; and in the vast possibilities included in this fact lies the unavoidable responsibility of every Christian Scientist.
There may be comparatively few Christian Scientists who are entrusted with the duties of public office. Students may become statesmen, and statesmen may become Christian Scientists; and all persons who are stationed in posts of trust must necessarily consider specifically those political and economic affairs which it is their duty to investigate and direct for the good of the people. But the great point is that every Christian Scientist, whatever his place or task, even though he may not know the details of national or international questions, can effectually use the God-given influence of right knowing, which knowing will have its proportionate effect in the bringing about of right decisions in the affairs of the world. In this spiritually mental democracy the groups of Christian Scientists in different nations, whose governments may sometimes be at variance on some specific question, can lift their thoughts above the temptation to view any given question nationalistically alone, and rather unite with all Christian Scientists in affirming the universal government of the one Mind, impartial divine Love. This faithfully done in their individual mental work, knowing the supremacy, justice, and wisdom of God, they can entrust the unfolding of details to the sure guidance of the one ever-present divine Principle or intelligence, ever working through "the leaven of Truth" in the governments of the world.
On one momentous occasion Mrs. Eddy requested the members of her church to offer specific prayer for the solving of a special international problem. Then she withdrew this request and, being obliged later to correct misapprehension of her second request, she explained (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 280, 281): "In no way nor manner did I request my church to cease praying for the peace of nations, but simply to pause in special prayer for peace. And why this asking? Because a spiritual foresight of the nations' drama presented itself and awakened a wiser want, even to know how to pray other than the daily prayer of my church,—'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.'" And in the next paragraph are her further inspiring words: "I cited, as our present need, faith in God's disposal of events. Faith full-fledged, soaring to the Horeb height, brings blessings infinite, and the spirit of this orison is the fruit of Rightness,—'on earth peace, good will toward men.' "
May we not see in her explanations of her requests wise warning to us concerning the difficulties that might arise, as between the different groups of nationals in the membership of The Mother Church, in their consideration of world questions from their different racial or national points of view? And does not her divinely derived wisdom in emphasizing anew the duty to use daily the universal prayer that Christ Jesus gave, "Thy kingdom come," protect the membership throughout the world from contradictory attempts to pray specifically from a merely nationalistic point of view for the solving of vexed international problems? Whereas, all Christian Scientists can unite in sincerely praying for the reign of the one Mind in the directing of the affairs of all the nations.
Mrs. Eddy made it obligatory upon all members of The Mother Church to pray daily for all mankind (Manual, Art. VIII, Sect. 4). She herself prayed daily for mankind; and in Miscellany (p. 220) she tells us for what she specifically prayed, namely, "for the pacification of all national difficulties, for the brotherhood of man, for the end of idolatry and infidelity, and for the growth and establishment of Christian religion— Christ's Christianity." How more sweepingly, permeatingly, unbewilderingly could prayer be offered for a world of varying beliefs, ambitions, rivalries, prejudices, cruelties, superstitions, and intoxications, called individual, national, and international difficulties? And for the wearied suppliants who may think the world problem too big for individual work to matter much, encouragement is found in Mrs. Eddy's further words in the same passage, "I also have faith that my prayer availeth, and that He who is overturning will overturn until He whose right it is shall reign."
That the world has felt the influence of the prayers of the Christian Science church no one would dispute. But do Christian Scientists themselves feel that they have done for the world all they know how to do through daily prayer for all mankind; through the pure, spiritually effectual means taught them in Jesus' words and through their Leader's illumined writings? Have they prayed daily, with faith that their prayer avails, for "the pacification of all national difficulties," and for "the end of idolatry and infidelity"? Have they known, truly known, when reading reports of economic and political disturbances, that God reigns in all the nations of the world? Have they known, healingly known, that their own lives are governed, supplied, abundantly supplied, with good—with harmony?
Christian Scientists have in their church—in the divinely directed, world-wide organization—the established teachings through which to reach mankind in healing the sin, disease, and sorrow of all who seek for help in Christian Science, and in knowing the allness of God for all the governments of the world. Following these rich and plentiful instructions, they will be effectually helping mankind, helping to prove powerless the envy, greed, hate, inanity, the lust for power, and the lust of intoxication which, acting through their materiality, blind men and lead them into strife and war. And as they are individually faithful in their daily round, in working for the purification of their own lives, they will help to prove in the only way possible to them that the church is founded on the Rock, Christ, and that Christian Science is leading the world in religious, medical, and political reform.
To understand and to be understood; to be frank, honest, loving and loyal, through good report and evil report; comforting when comfort is needed ... rejoicing in another's success and happiness and sharing one's own success and happiness with another, with an ever-broadening love for that which is good and true... a friendship that has perceived the real individual as the reflection of God and can never lose sight of the true and real self, however much the clouds of sense may seek to darken the spiritual vision—such is my conception of an ideal friendship.—
