The world needs healing.
Surely our Church has an active role in this healing, but are we always clear about how this should take place? Praying to understand better the nature of the real work we have to do, we may find ourselves asking two distinct questions: What did Mrs. Eddy see as the role of her Church in meeting the world's needs? What constitutes healing?
In 1879, at a meeting of the Christian Scientist Association, it was decided on a motion by Mrs. Eddy in her words, "To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." See Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17. Doesn't this mean that primitive Christianity will always be the basis of our healing work? Also, in Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook, Mrs. Eddy writes of Jesus' followers, "Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being." Science and Health, p. 41.
