The Christian Science Monitor is published as a vital, Christly activity of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Through the appropriate channels open to it as a newspaper, it reaches with healing purpose into the many concerns and interests of human thought.
In his biography of Mrs. Eddy, Irving C. Tomlinson writes: "As each Christian Science periodical appeared, including The Christian Science Monitor, it was not merely a journalistic or literary venture; it was a spiritual, life-dispensing message, designed to bring salvation to humanity, to serve as an entering wedge of release from mortality, from its terrors, agonies, despairs, and failures. It was designed to bring life to all; to enter into the history of each individual, to rehabilitate his experience, and to shape his destiny." Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), p. 99; Surely, this vital, spiritual mission of our newspaper is one we can love with all our hearts.
Our appreciation
We can love the Monitor for what it is in truth—representative of Mind's activity. Mrs. Eddy said, as Tomlinson reports it, "God calls upon me to found a daily newspaper." And when questioned as to the wisdom of using the words "Christian Science" in the paper's title, she replied firmly, "God gave me this name and it remains." ibid., pp. 105-106; These words of its founder give clear evidence that the Monitor was founded with the same divinely inspired wisdom and impulsion through which Mrs. Eddy established all the activities of her Church. And we, through our expression of divine Love, can play a significant role in extending our paper's Christly service to mankind.
Where can we better begin our love for the Monitor than in our appreciation of what it spiritually represents? We can individually participate in the Monitor's development through our prayerful realization that Mind is always expressing its completeness and perfection through all its ideas. What strength and freedom we can bring to the Monitor—to this appearing of the divine activity to human sense—as we prayerfully affirm that its qualities belong not to many minds but to the only Mind there really is, the one divine Mind, God!
Healing purpose
How can we prayerfully support the Monitor staff's dedicated efforts to maintain the paper's healing purpose? By upholding the Monitor's integrity as a daily evidence of Mind's expression of its own infinite intelligence and wisdom. We can gratefully acknowledge that divine Love itself is the source of the inspiration that motivates, guides, and directs each issue of the Monitor. We can affirm that no element of the carnal mind can enter into any part of Mind's operations to restrict its activity or resist its expression. Our acknowledgment of Mind's supreme control over all the activities associated with the Monitor acts as a law of annihilation to the belief that evil can prevent in any way the fulfillment of the Monitor's spiritual purpose.
Realizing that the activities of The Mother Church exist to bless all mankind, the Christian Scientist loves the Monitor by daily supporting its universal outreach. He realizes that each day the Monitor contains insights whose sole purpose is to alert, arouse, enrich, and strengthen mankind—"to serve as an entering wedge of release from mortality, from its terrors, agonies, despairs, and failures." Each day's Monitor includes perceptions of quickening and practical import to people all around the globe. What a support we can be to the Monitor as we realize that it represents the activity of right ideas; that the demand for and supply of right ideas are one; that Love provides no unwanted, wasted, nor unfulfilled ideas; and that man is continuously receptive of right ideas!
Impact on world affairs
The supremely determinative event in all history is the dawning in human consciousness of the Christ, Truth. In this dawning we perceive that all real activity is constituted of divine Mind's continuous unfoldment of its divine perfection and completeness in its spiritual idea, man and the universe. Only as we evaluate human events from the standpoint of their relation to this development of Truth can we bring to them the healing influence of the Christ.
In this era the revelation of Truth is bringing about a stupendous transformation in human thought as material misconceptions of existence yield to the scientific understanding of spiritual reality. During this period of tremendous change, both good and evil thought-forces are appearing in new and intensified forms. Thus the need for a newspaper that can report on these changes with intelligent integrity from an underlying base of spiritual understanding—the understanding base Science provides. The founder of the Monitor writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science only can explain the incredible good and evil elements now coming to the surface." Science and Health, p. 83;
The purpose of the Monitor, as set by Mrs. Eddy, "to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent," The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353; is accomplished through the understanding of Science that a host of enlightened thinkers —both reporters and readers—bring to the Monitor's news, features, and editorials. It is Science working in the thought of the writer and the reader that enables the Monitor to fulfill its Christly mission. Focusing the light of Truth on the world scene enables us to discern and support the good in human thought as it ascends above evil—the mesmeric belief that life, substance, and intelligence are material. If the Monitor were asking us to accept its reports on political corruption, economic malaise, international distrust, and crime as the reality of life, its basis would not be any different from other newspapers, but such is not the case. The Monitor brings such reports to us not to accept as real but to correct as false beliefs. It provides us with the information we need to fulfill our responsibilities as Christian metaphysicians with a worldwide healing practice.
The great struggle in the world today between the forces of good and evil will end only when the Christ, Truth, has freed all human thought from the carnal mind's claim to hold humanity in mesmeric servitude to its materialistic theories of creation. In this climactic struggle the Monitor wages war on the side of Spirit. It upholds every element of wisdom and peace as they struggle for expression in world thought. The Monitor takes a frontline position in the world scene as "a spiritual, life-dispensing message, designed to bring salvation to humanity." It stands for honesty and hope, for justice and humanity; it uncovers and opposes corruption, discrimination (racial, economic, sexual), immorality, and oppression—all that would in any way prevent the peoples of earth from achieving the joy and freedom that are their spiritual heritage as the children of God.
We have a friend
It may seem particularly challenging to love the Monitor when it takes an editorial position on an economic or political issue that doesn't coincide with our own view. But if its content promotes our deeper consideration of a situation, resulting in either a strengthened commitment to our original position or in a change of view, then the Monitor has fulfilled its purpose. A good friend is someone with whom we can debate the issues without falling out. And that's the kind of friend we have in the Monitor—a paper that doesn't attempt to do our thinking for us but arouses and lifts the best thinking within us.
The Monitor's editorials propose positions and courses of action that, in its view, most closely approximate an expression of divine Principle. As human thought works toward a higher and fuller expression of Principle, there is certainly room for a diversity of opinion as to the specific economic, political, or social action that at a given moment is best suited to promoting humanity's progress. And when such opinions are shared with humility and love, they can lead to the perception of solutions most beneficial to all concerned. As its founder stated, "The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind." ibid.;
The Monitor has a distinct role in the activities of our church and a unique role among newspapers. It expresses the love of the church and its members for universal humanity. It brings the influence of the Christ to the problems confronting mankind. We love the Monitor and we help it attain its object only as we seize the opportunity it daily provides to "go . . . into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15. That is, to support its healing role. As we ourselves strive—as the paper does—to rise above nationalistic, political, racial, and social biases we will bring to bear upon world problems the impartial, healing light of the Christ, Truth.
