True communication is entirely spiritual, and it penetrates human consciousness more deeply and more lastingly than human speech ever can. Through Christian Science, the understanding of real communication, the divine Mind unfolding itself to its own ideas, becomes clear and demonstrable.
This truth has vital application in church work. What if each member of every Church of Christ, Scientist, determined to live so fully conscious of his own and others' Christliness that this elevated state of thought communicated itself to all whom his life touched? Think of the quality of a church service before and during which each member had endeavored to express nothing but the Christ!
We can refuse to take into church any critical, depressed, or hateful thoughts, and instead acknowledge only the healing presence of God's Word communicating itself to His own idea, man. "The Word was God," we read in the Bible. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." John 1:1, 3;
The Readers in a Church of Christ, Scientist, can trust God, Mind, to communicate His Word. Realizing this, they have a spiritual basis from which to read the message with vitality and understanding. Their responsibility to speak clearly and intelligently is made easier as a material, personal sense of communication is subjugated to an understanding of what constitutes true communication.
Mrs. Eddy recognized that the quality of one's thought communicates more penetratingly than the spoken word. She demands of Readers: "They must keep themselves unspotted from the world,—uncontaminated with evil,—that the mental atmosphere they exhale shall promote health and holiness, even that spiritual animus so universally needed." Manual of The Mother Church, Art. III, Sect. 1;
Church ushers have a frontline opportunity to behold all who enter as God's perfect expressions and not as limited mortals. This spiritual fact of man's true nature, when realized, communicates itself to the churchgoer even before a verbal welcome is uttered. The usher can affirm the true, immortal status of every individual. He can realize that man, Mind's expression, is not subject to the tug of worldly diversions. These suggestions have no real power to detract from the healing atmosphere of church.
Exercising only the senses of Soul and recognizing as actually present the "spiritual animus so universally needed," we prepare for a church service long before our arrival. An inspired Christian Science service transcends the human picture of a gathering of Readers, ushers, and congregation. It represents an outpouring of Truth and Love.
To approach a service with thoughts filled with personal problems or controversial church business will not quicken the blessing that should await at that service the congregation and the community. Material, personal thinking frustrates the unity of purpose that results when members dedicate their every thought during church to glorifying God. Unified prayer awakens thought to the healing power of the Word. Animal magnetism, the supposed pull of materiality, is proved powerless to the degree it is realized that man is embraced in the pure atmosphere of divine Love and that Love is the only Mind. This cannot be achieved when members are distracted from spiritual realization by excessive human doing. Conducting unnecessary church business before the service, or rushing to one's seat after the service begins, may weaken the Christly unity needed to support the spiritual vitality of the service.
Each member has the obligation and privilege of realizing through his prayers that—as Mrs. Eddy stresses—"not personal intercommunion but divine law is the communicator of truth, health, and harmony to earth and humanity." Science and Health, p. 72; In his true being each member of the congregation is the pure reflection of the one perfect Mind, Love. Resistance to God's Word does not exist in the allness of Mind. To know this is a vital contribution to a church service. And it indicates that we are glimpsing the expansive, healing effect of silent spiritual communion. Mrs. Eddy tells us: "The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, 'as when a lion roareth.'" ibid., p. 559.
Our church services will be more vital and effective as we let go a finite, personal sense of communication, and realize that true communication is wholly spiritual. It is the Christ, Truth, God's pure message, speaking to human consciousness and awaking it to the presence of divine goodness.
