This year has marked the centennial of The First Church of Christ, Scientist. The Manual of The Mother Church includes this record: "On the twenty-third day of September, 1892, at the request of Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, twelve of her students and Church members met and reorganized, under her jurisdiction, the Christian Science Church and named it, The First Church of Christ, Scientist." Church Manual by Mrs. Eddy, p. 18.
On that particular day—September 23, 1892—events were happening in the world that would surely have seemed more notable than this handful of people reorganizing a church. But Christian Scientists had earlier committed "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." Ibid., p. 17. And during the following one hundred years, this commitment became an example, something immensely significant, to hundreds of thousands of people—affecting the very fabric of their lives and of the world itself. Christian Scientists today are greatly appreciative of the contribution of these pioneers. Any commitment to spirituality, however, has always been made, and is always to be made, individually. History has shown us wonderful examples of people pledged to spiritual-mindedness, but it's up to each of us to make his or her own demonstration of it.
The ultimate example of spirituality in life and practice is Christ Jesus. He proved unequivocally that spirituality is the only route to salvation. His life was the very embodiment of a spiritual purity that leads humanity out of the dead-end elements of materialism. Clearly, he knew the depth of satisfaction, the spiritual peace, that go hand in hand with healing the sick and sinning. Yet, with everything he did, he couldn't actually make people, either then or now, hunger for spiritual-mindedness. They themselves needed a heartfelt willingness to know the things of Spirit. Just after his crucifixion and resurrection he found his disciples, not healing or preaching, but just out in a boat—fishing. He knew he would soon be leaving them, and it seemed that he wished to "pass the torch," to cause the disciples to further God's work. When eating bread and fish with them on the shore, he asked Peter, "Lovest thou me more than these?" Although Peter's actions hadn't always proved it, he answered, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." In fact, Jesus asked him similarly two more times and, following each instance, told Peter to "Feed my sheep." John 21:2–17.
The torch that every follower of Jesus needs to carry may be called what Mrs. Eddy speaks of as "the torch of spiritual understanding." She writes in Science and Health: "If men would bring to bear upon the study of the Science of Mind half the faith they bestow upon the so-called pains and pleasures of material sense, they would not go on from bad to worse, until disciplined by the prison and the scaffold; but the whole human family would be redeemed through the merits of Christ,—through the perception and acceptance of Truth. For this glorious result Christian Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding." Science and Health, p. 202. Spiritual understanding is a consequence of man's relationship to God. An understanding, or comprehension, of reality is something divine Spirit imparts to its creation. There is a continuity to this. Spirit's creation naturally manifests spirituality, and because this is the spiritual fact of being, it is inevitable that humanity will progressively discern and demonstrate God's truth. And because God, Truth itself, is infinite, the one genuine, irresistible power, it's undeniable that Truth will continue to assert itself in human consciousness.
Like the Christians who lived two or three hundred years after Jesus and his immediate disciples, we today are also confronting the same dangers of materiality and ritual they confronted.
Many, many things have changed since the time Jesus sat on the shore with his disciples, asking them to "feed my sheep," and even more so in the last one hundred years since 1892, when a handful of people in the northeastern United States renewed their commitment to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." The changes that happened during almost nineteen hundred years were incredible. What about changes during the last twenty-five years, or even five years? It seems as though the rate of change grows geometrically and, whether we like it or not, we are carried along with it.
There is something, though, that cannot change. It is unaffected by time, opinions, trends, and fashion. It is the permanence of God and His creation. For God "there is no new thing under the sun." Eccl. 1:9. And as the Bible says, "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: they shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." Heb. 1:10–12. With the kaleidoscope of change on the human scene, it is well worth hungering for the permanence of spirituality and spiritual-mindedness. The Bible, with Christ Jesus' words and example, gives us something stable to tie our lives to, something that shows us that no matter how much things change, the goodness of God, divine Spirit, is the central theme to life.
Hand in hand with the Bible is the key to the Scriptures—the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health. Jesus said to his followers, "If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." John 14:15, 16. Mrs. Eddy stated, "This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science." Science and Health, p. 55. The book Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, together with the Bible, brings to mankind the message of the Comforter, which Jesus said "shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." John 14:26. Science and Health is the textbook for healing, the textbook for regeneration, the textbook for progress, the textbook to help us love one another. Reading this book, you'll find yourself in it—you'll discover who you really are.
Looking forward from this hundred-year milestone of the Church of Christ, Scientist, people today still face the demand to commit their lives to genuine spirituality. It's really the same demand that Jesus' disciples faced on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and that those few dedicated New Englanders recognized in forming their Church a century ago. Yet, like the Christians who lived two or three hundred years after Jesus and his immediate disciples, we today are also confronting the same dangers of materiality and ritual they confronted. Do we love divine Spirit and spiritual-mindedness "more than these"—more than materiality with its substanceless proposals of temporary satisfaction?
The torch has been passed to each of us—the torch of spiritual understanding presented in the Bible and in Science and Health. Each of us naturally hungers for spirituality, naturally hungers to feel God's influence and know His creation. It is something to which we can commit and dedicate ourselves. And like others before us, we will be blessed as we commit ourselves to forwarding God's healing message of Truth and Love in this age.
