TO Christian Scientists, Christ Jesus is the Way-shower. He had such spiritual understanding that his judgments were unerring in their praise or condemnation. The compassion, the kindliness, the brotherly love, the courage, the fearlessness of Jesus in meeting the human need wherever he found it are illustrated in the parables he used in order to stress important metaphysical points. Illumined by the light of divine Science, they bear witness to the intensity of interest with which the master Christian looked upon the world of his day.
But they reveal something else about him which is deeper and more important: they show, as we learn to do in Christian Science, that when he looked about him he saw not only the vivid human picture and its lessons, but the opportunity to reveal God and His attributes to the receptive thought.
Christ Jesus was the greatest teacher the world has ever known, and our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has interpreted his teachings in divine Science. That we have her works to turn to in order to enlighten a Bible text is something to be everlastingly grateful for. But our gratitude should not stop with us. Gratitude must be expressed in ministering to others, in finding ways to be helpful to those who need a helping hand.
In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus set forth the highest concept of brotherly love. The man whose wounds the Samaritan bound was not a friend or a member of his family or a man of high station who might be expected to reward him handsomely; he was a stranger. The Samaritan not only bound up his wounds but took him to an inn and paid for him to stay there until he was able to go on his way, healed. He even said he would pay more, if necessary, when he again traveled past the inn. He truly loved his neighbor as himself and thus set an example for all time.
No doubt Christ Jesus brought into the parable for a specific reason the priest and the Levite, who did not go to the man's aid but "passed by on the other side" (Luke 10:31). May it not be that it is not enough to be a Christian Scientist and attend Sunday church services, Wednesday testimony meetings, Christian Science lectures, and study daily the Lesson-Sermon, outlined in the Quarterly? We must do more than this. We must minister to those in need. We must be willing to do for the stranger who has fallen among thieves— the thieves being fear, lack, disease, discouragement, hate, jealousy, and so on—and prove them powerless.
All the parables of Jesus hold important lessons for us, but that of the good Samaritan applies particularly to our meeting the needs of humanity through the Christian Science Visiting Nurse Services. The first of these services was established in the United States in 1944 as the result of prayerful work by some Christian Science practitioners who saw the need for these ministrations. Since then many more have been established, and now these services are effectively aiding Christian Scientists in many of the large cities of the United States, some in Canada, and also overseas.
This nursing service is a sacred trust, both to the administering board of trustees and to the visiting nurse. All calls for assistance through these services are known only to those directly involved, and the work goes forward harmoniously as workers demonstrate the unselfed love our great Leader admonishes us to make our own. In "Miscellaneous Writings" she gives us the pattern for a life of devoted service to others (p. 250): "Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power."
The "strong demands on love" are met with Christlike humanity as nurses go to patients who are alone in their homes, often unable to care for themselves, but knowing the truth steadfastly as they have been taught to do in Christian Science to effect their own healing. Reports of many grand achievements effected through the nursing service prove it to be a Christlike activity of vast worth to the Cause of Christian Science in helping Scientists to make a quick recovery and a normal adjustment.
The Christian Science visiting nurse fulfills the requirements of the following Scripture: "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me" (Matt. 25:35, 36).
Since Christian Science nursing is a God-ordained activity, provided for in Article VIII, Section 31, of the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy, we accept this activity as of vital importance in the healing ministry. When the Christian Science nurse maintains for herself the truth of God and of man's perfect spiritual relationship to Him, she keeps her expectation of healing. Indeed, our duty to God is to manifest Him at all times, to so love Him that we spontaneously express the radiancy of spiritual understanding by acknowledging His supremacy under every circumstance and condition. What peace and comfort the Christian Science visiting nurse takes with her on her daily round!
Surely she fulfills our Leader's hope and trust, "O Christian Scientist, thou of the church of the new-born; awake to a higher and holier love for God and man; put on the whole armor of Truth; rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation,—that ye may go to the bed of anguish, and look upon this dream of life in matter, girt with a higher sense of omnipotence; and behold once again the power of divine Life and Love to heal and reinstate man in God's own image and likeness, having 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism'" (The People's Idea of God, p. 14).
The visiting nurse is proving for the field in which she works that the Scientists there are aware of another of our Leader's statements (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 271), "It is of comparatively little importance what a man thinks or believes he knows; the good that a man does is the one thing needful and the sole proof of rightness."
