High in the grateful regard of Christian Scientists for those who serve mankind with unselfish devotion stands the Christian Science nurse, whose ministry, of love requires a unique combination of devotion to God, practical skills, and an ability to apply the truths of Christian Science in the face of the evidences of disease and discord. Her service of tender compassion for her fellowmen rewards her richly.
A significant section in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy (Art. VIII, Sect. 31) authorizes and outlines the nurse's duties and thereby establishes nursing as an integral part of the healing ministry of Christian Science. It includes the following: "A member of The Mother Church who represents himself or herself as a Christian Science nurse shall be one who has a demonstrable knowledge of Christian Science practice, who thoroughly understands the practical wisdom necessary in a sick room, and who can take proper care of the sick."
Nursing is far more than a matter of a competent individual going to the one in need and making a bed, giving a bath, preparing a meal, or doing some bandaging. To be sure, the Christian Science nurse does these things; but she does much more. She realizes that the physical aspect of the nursing work will be as effective as her spiritual preparation for and support of it.
As a Christian Scientist she bases her reasoning and her convictions on the allness of God, or good, and not on the testimony of material sense, for Science unfolds that reality exists only in what God has created. Working for increased spiritual understanding, she begins always with God, and God unfolds to her consciousness what He is and what man is as His reflection. Thus she comes to realize that man, being a spiritual idea of divine Mind, is Mind's object, not the object of the physical senses so familiar to the unenlightened human mind.
The Christian Science nurse has a daily opportunity to see that those in need are afforded not only the warmth of loving and tender ministrations, but, most important, the Christly compassion which encourages the one in need to discover himself as the perfect image and likeness of God instead of a sick or aged or helpless mortal. This spiritual identification is an essential in Christian Science nursing, for both the work and the worker should be identified, not with changeable, vulnerable mortality and personality, but with the perfect, loving, divine Principle, God.
Each student of Christian Science learns the efficacy of correct identification in his own experience. He knows that basic to any spiritual progress he has made has been the discovery of his true identity as a child of God, a spiritual idea in divine Mind. Without this correct identification, thought may drift along with the familiar mortal, or sidewalk-level, view of men. Then it is mortal mind that is looking upon its own mistaken mortal conception, and then the report, which is all too often heard, is that of pain, sickness, helplessness, hopelessness.
But when God looks upon man, the report is always given as stated in the Scriptures (Matt. 3:17), "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and this is the report which the Christian Science nurse, working from her knowledge of the correct identification of man as the image and likeness of God, is listening for and which she is helping others to hear.
Diluting, watering down, as it were, the effectiveness of spiritual identification by the contemplation of suffering does not support the healing work of Christian Science. Our Leader warns against the tendency to magnify the human problem through material analysis. In Science and Health, she writes (p. 445), "You render the divine law of healing obscure and void, when you weigh the human in the scale with the divine, or limit in any direction of thought the omnipresence and omnipotence of God."
One who works closely with a patient may be tempted to "weigh the human in the scale with the divine" and to let the mortal analysis of age, infirmity, incurability, dilute faith. But the Christianly scientific way is for one to study and work daily to rise to the altitude of the Christly analysis of man and to keep man's Godlikeness, his Christly identity, predominant in thought while performing the necessary services for the patient.
Christ Jesus' approach to every problem presented to him was spiritually scientific, for he based his work on spiritual identification. He saw through the veil of mortal sense to the essential Christ, Truth, and thus wiped out the error. Do we as disciples of the master Christian follow his example and also delve beneath the material surface of things? Do we work always from the basis of perfect God and perfect man, recognizing as unscientific, therefore untrue, the description, contemplation, and acknowledgment of disease? Do we scientifically refuse to accept the deceitful testimony of material sense, which constitutes a denial of God's all-presence and all-power?
Regardless of the human analysis of the physical condition, situation, or history, we should ever be aware of the Master's words, "with God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26) never wavered and was never diluted.
But this spiritual determination, this absolute reliance on God, must be accompanied by compassion, by true tenderness. In the poem "Christ and Christmas," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 53),
In tender mercy, Spirit sped
A loyal ray
To rouse the living, wake the dead,
And point the Way—
The Christ-idea, God anoints—
Of Truth and Life.
The nurse may well pray that her work may be done "in tender mercy," and be sped by Spirit to meet the human need. Tenderness is divine compassion, the utilization of the Comforter which heals. It is love not living unto itself but reaching out to give, to bless, to help. Paul recommended this Godlike quality to the early Christians at Ephesus when he wrote, "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted" (Eph. 4:32).
And who could be more tender than Christ Jesus as he lovingly met the needs of the multitudes he healed? He was the shepherd tenderly caring for his flock. It was true tenderness that raised Peter's mother-in-law from a bed of fever, that restored the widow's only son, and that raised Lazarus from the tomb—to mention only a few of those to whom he went "in tender mercy."
A Christian Science nurse whom I know expressed "tender mercy" with gratifying results at the very time when her ability to serve seemed temporarily hampered by her own problems, though she was striving to identify herself not with the problems but with Christly perfection and dominion. Receiving a call for help ten days after she had fallen and broken her leg, she explained that she was on crutches. The practitioner who had called her said that that would make no difference, if she could just be with the patient, perform the necessary services, and read to her in support of his metaphysical treatment. During the night, however, when the claims of suffering became very aggressive and the patient's need seemed suddenly urgent, the nurse rose quickly to go to the bedside and in so doing completely forgot the crutches. She ministered skillfully and tenderly and very shortly witnessed a complete recovery.
When she returned home, she found that a member of her family, whom she had been concerned about leaving when she was called on the case, had been freed from a long-standing problem. She herself never used the crutches again, and her leg remained strong and normal. In self-forgetful service, prompted by Love and supported by Truth, she truly acted "in tender mercy," and the healing results were impartial in blessing each one who seemed involved in the need.
The importance that Mrs. Eddy places on the quality of tenderness is evident in all her words of encouragement and counsel to her followers. When we remember how much Mrs. Eddy did accomplish, we realize how deep must have been her love for God and man and how great was her own tenderness toward suffering, sorrowing humanity. It is well, therefore, for us as students of Christian Science to recognize the value of tenderness and seek to cultivate it.
In her writings Mrs. Eddy couples tenderness with spiritual understanding and strength. Let us strive, then, for a greater understanding of the love of God, knowing that this understanding will manifest itself in greater tenderness in all our human relationships and will thereby enable us to convey with greater strength the healing truth of Christian Science to the world through the correct identification of man as we go to meet the human need "in tender mercy."
