As may be seen in the Manual of The Mother Church, our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in arranging the order of our Sunday services and Wednesday evening testimony meetings, made provision for a period to be set aside for the reading of necessary notices. It is probably true that, while recognizing the need for these announcements, many of us who regularly attend the church services have come to regard them as primarily intended for the benefit of the newcomer, and have become so familiar with most of the details that we are apt to pay scant attention to them. We have in some measure lost sight of their purpose. Where do our thoughts range during this portion of our services? Do they dwell on our individual problems? Do they perhaps engage in criticism of another member's dress? Do they even speculate upon the possibilities of the forthcoming midday meal? Alas! some of us might confess to all three of these delinquencies.
This writer is grateful for an experience which led him to a greater appreciation of the importance of paying attention to the notices. At one time, he had to travel to all sections of England and Wales as part of his daily duties, and, in consequence, from time to time had the privilege of attending testimony meetings in many different places. One evening when in the north of England, he climbed several flights of stairs to a little upper chamber, where a devoted band of Christian Scientists were holding their monthly testimony meeting. When the notices were read, he was struck as never before by the familiar opening sentence, "This society is a branch of The Mother Church." How often had he heard that, or a similar statement, in churches and societies all over the country! This time it brought home to him, more clearly than ever before, the unity and universality of the Christian Science movement, which makes the Christian Scientist feel the true sense of home wherever he may be.
The familiar words brought to the student's thought the picture of a tree with its many branches, each branch clothed with its leaves, the whole a thing of beauty affording shade and rest to the weary traveler. He thought to himself that, as there can be no living branches separate from the tree, so a trunk without any branches would not be a tree. Nor can the leaves be said to belong only to the branch, but not to the tree. We read in Romans, "As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." As with the tree, so with our church; it is one—indivisible. The Mother Church and its branches are one harmonious whole.
