Christ Jesus' directive as he sent his disciples forth on their preaching mission was that they should, as he had, preach first the immanence of God's heavenly kingdom —that it had come, was nigh unto them: "As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick." Matt. 10:7, 8;
Here we see the emerging pattern of the Christly ministry as indicated in the Lord's Prayer. The secondary benefits of our daily bread, debts forgiven, and freedom from temptation and evil flow from first recognizing the spiritual reign or realm of God and perceiving that this His realm, His kingdom, is come, is at hand, is within.
This withinness of the kingdom applies to all men, irrespective of anything that may appear to the contrary. It was to those very Pharisees, who resisted his teachings, hampered his mission, and finally crucified him because of it, that Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you."Luke 17:21;
Man, being, as Christian Science reveals, God's image and likeness, is already within the holy kingdom, and this kingdom is already within him. A Christian Science lecture prolonging the tone of our Master's ministry, is not, then, an introduction of man to this heavenly kingdom. It is but a public ratification of this fact, an evidencing of it in human experience.
How, then, could there be justification for believing that any of the members of our community are devoid of, or outside, this kingdom, when in spiritual reality they are God's children? Although we may be seeing these, His children, as sinful mortals, spiritually barren and apart from the kingdom of heaven, this does not make them so. How can we stigmatize them as being unready for the spiritual resurgence that our lectures are divinely destined to bring to the community? In our lecture preparation we need to recognize that every community member has the nascent aspiration for the heavenly good of the kingdom, although at the moment he may be unaware of it. "The aspiration after heavenly good," Mrs. Eddy tells us, "comes even before we discover what belongs to wisdom and Love." Science and Health, p. 265; Do not these words of our Leader's refer to our community neighbors as well as to ourselves? Knowing that the aspiration is already there, we can help our community discover its source, substance, and fulfillment through the lectures.
Our lecture arrangements will tend to produce the results that we, the church members, have consented to in our thinking. Knowing this, we will never, even momentarily, entertain as reasonable probabilities the absence-engendering suggestions of community indifference or resistance, of inclement weather, transportation difficulties, or conflicting engagements. Such suggestions must be vigorously resisted and reversed if we would not jeopardize the attendance at our lecture and the success of its message. We cannot afford to relinquish to the undefended thinking of the general public the responsibility for our lecture's success. The responsibility remains strictly ours. It cannot be ignored, evaded, or abrogated.
Lecture success is never the reward of passivity or selfishness. It is gained only as it is assiduously earned. We do not achieve it merely by nullifying mortal mind's suggestions of failure. We put something more spiritually vital, more Christly, in their place. The spiritual content of our work must hold the inner quickening of the same Christly attraction that drew the multitudes to the preaching of Jesus, his disciples, and Paul. Only so will we arouse, appeal to, and attract to our lectures the more sophisticated thought of today. Actually, the fulfillment of our neighbors' aspirations for all good—Heavenly, and even earthly— comes not through human sophistication but through Christly spiritualization.
Only as the Christly conviction that our neighbors are already satisfied in God's order burgeons first in our own thought can we help our neighbors gain this inner Christliness and the accompanying recognition that all their aspirations can be satisfied. Through this conviction our preparatory work forsakes the relative sense of life and its doubts and fears. In Christian Science, we deal with scientific, spiritual facts only, never with vague, tentative probabilities. We therefore do not work doubtfully, even if hopefully, up to the kingdom of heaven as a future possibility. In the correct, scientific application of metaphysical law we work out from the kingdom in the absolute, the spiritual, view of things, which is also the successful view. We thus demonstrate the kingdom within as the present and continuing state of all men.
Knowing this, we will be found understandingly preaching this kingdom, first more fully to and for ourselves, then our families, our fellow church members, our near and distant neighbors. Like ripples on the pond, in the degree of its universality, our preaching, praying, knowing, will spread in ever-widening circles, embracing the entire religious, medical, academic, social, and business community thought. Such selective, scientific knowing renders impotent the opposition that might claim to operate through any specific group.
The irresistible impetus of the heavenly potency inherent in our so praying penetrates in some measure the entire 'community. It touches the receptive thought, lessening its spiritual darkness, progressively regenerating and uplifting it. We thus fulfill the Scriptural requirement, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." John 12:32;
The sincerity of our praying, our knowing, will determine the depth of our compassionate desire to share with "all men" the blessings of this heavenly kingdom. This desire will find its inevitable implementation as we sacrifice self in actively working to bring the blessings of the Christ-idea to the acceptance of all the members of our community. The fullest community acceptance of our lectures will be certain as we understand that the power of our praying, our preaching, our knowing, our working, is not of ourselves. Each of us evidences that individual alliance with God's power of which Mrs. Eddy writes in Unity of Good: "I say, Be allied to the deific power, and all that is good will aid your journey, as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian Science, man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a union predestined from all eternity."Un., p. 17;
So allied to this deific power, the church members' thoughts and prayers become a dynamic force, translating the power of this predestined union into a more successful working out of the necessary details as to dates, halls, advertising, and so forth. We thus ensure the perfect follow-through of effective lecture promotion, orderly committee arrangements, thoughtful provision for the comfort of the audience, and full attendance. The practical utility of Paul's rousing call to action "The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power" 1 Cor. 4:20; finds its joyous expression in us. As it does, there will be no affinity, consent, or response in our thinking about our lecture to the carnal mind's earth-weights of ignorance and opposition. These will fall away, powerless to hamper the community's response to our silent, outreaching prayer.
Being no longer of sense, our prayers rise unhindered into the altitude of Soul. They enhance the lecture hour and place with the optimum of spiritualized atmosphere, receptivity, and healing. Supported by our scientific preaching first the kingdom, the lecturer, with the convincing clarity of spiritual inspiration, will be free to focus, as in Pentecostal light, the glory of the heavenly kingdom. With the Spirit giving him utterance, his message will be speaking to every heart.
Each individual, at his own particular point in spiritual progress, may hear the Christ whispering to him its age-old invitation, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Matt. 25:34; Each may feel his heart burn within him at the lecturer's words, thus companioning with the Christ on a spiritually mental journey to his own modern Emmaus.
What can hinder this spiritual journey from continuing? Our lecture's community influence should deepen and broaden into fuller attendance at more inspiring church services and meetings, more dynamic Sunday School sessions. There need be no spiritual hiatus between lecture seasons. As we, the lecture hosts, continue to uphold the current lecturer's message in its fulfillment in the community, each subsequent lecture will become a more powerful rallying of a spiritually awakened community, which finds its deeper aspirations more and more fully satisfied with each recurring lecture season.
The vital message of each lecture will then be to our community neighbors an ever quickening of their motivations, ambitions, and accomplishments. Our lectures will be achieving the mighty redemptive works of which they are capable. They will be to our community the healing sign of which our Leader writes in the Preface of Science and Health: "They are the sign of Immanuel, or 'God with us,'—a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime,
To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised."Science and Health, p. xi.
