Since the beginning of 1993 the Office of the Publisher, the Writings of Mary Baker Eddy, has been sponsoring meetings around the world focusing on the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. These meetings have been open to ... ... any one with an interest in Science and Health.
LEADING THOUGHT INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
Nathan A Talbot, as President of The Mother Church (June 8, 1992, to June 7, 1993), has conducted, with colleagues, a good portion of these meetings. Here are some of his comments on their purpose and fruitage:
As we near the end of a century, issues of major importance come more sharply into focus. And Mrs. Eddy's book Science and Health is of major importance to everyone, not just to Christian Scientists. It is understandable, then, that meetings pondering this book would begin to take place.
Though the seeds of such meetings have been sown over the decades, the actual event that husbanded them took place when twelve practitioners and teachers of Christian Science from around the globe responded to an invitation from the Office of the Publisher. It was an unusual invitation. The participants were invited to spend three days together, talking, praying, listening—cherishing Science and Health. There was no other agenda beyond an opportunity for these metaphysicians to let their spiritual sense guide them as they considered what this book meant to them and to mankind.
These individuals felt something very special had happened. After all, how often does one take several days just to pray about this priceless gift that has been given to humanity? One of the recommendations that came out of their sessions together was that an opportunity be provided to share their thoughts and feelings with fellow Christian Scientists—and to encourage them to consider innovative and creative ways, both individually and through their branch churches, of truly fulfilling their roles as stewards or trustees of Science and Health; to consider how the book can best reach those who are spiritually hungry for its message.
Over a period of several months a number of meetings began to take place. In fact, over one hundred meetings were planned around the globe. Again, something significant began to happen. There has been a growing recognition that all of us have a role to play—and that there is some urgency in letting God reveal how all of us, together, can better fill that role.
Not that everyone attending these meetings was a Christian Scientist. But those in the audiences have had some connection with the book. A Protestant minister at one meeting in the United States, for instance, told the speakers afterward that he really couldn't disagree with anything that was said during the two-hour discussion of Science and Health. Another minister in a different part of the United States contacted the Christian Science Committee on Publication for her state for further discussion after the meeting.
A doctor whose wife is a Christian Scientist explained after one of the meetings, "Tomorrow I will begin to read that book." There have been reports of healings from attendees and continuing comments about the value of drawing together for such a common, vital purpose. But most of all, there has been a resurgence of vision about the meaning of Science and Health for ourselves and for our society.
A distinct shift has been discernible. People are more willing to share the book. But there has not been an indiscriminate handing out of books to anyone around. Rather, there has been an earnest listening for God's guidance, followed by an unselfish willingness to act on spiritual intuition.
One woman wrote of a homeless person who came up to her car while she was waiting at a stoplight. She knew it was right to share. She reached over and picked up a copy of Science and Health she kept close by, and placed it in his hands. His response was warm and genuine. Another told of a perfect opportunity to share the book—but she didn't have one to give! A good lesson for all of us!
And of course some efforts to give the book have led to unexpected responses. One man, for instance, wrote of his sharing the book with another man. A week later the man returned it, explaining he was done, now having read it through. "But it's for ongoing study," the giver explained. "Well, it seemed to me she just kept saying over and over that there is only one Mind and God's got it," was the reply! And yet, if the reader recognized even that single point—that there is only one Mind— wasn't something very special gained?
At the end of one meeting an individual in the audience went up to one of the speakers and spoke for only a moment, reminding him that Science and Health is also printed in English Braille. She knew, because reading it in Braille had healed her of blindness. There have been many such memorable moments during and after these meetings.
It is clear, however, that the meetings are not at all an end in themselves. They are, instead, a beginning—a time for all of us to think freshly about what's most important to us. The real purpose of the gatherings was to encourage further thinking and praying about what Science and Health is here to do. In a sense, these times together have been a first tier, so to speak. Continual thought by The Mother Church and its branches and individual members will gather momentum in upcoming months and years as we approach the end of this millennium. Look forward to Mary Baker Eddy's book occupying increasing thought and attention not only within our Church but outside of it too.
SCIENCE AND HEALTH
meeting held in The Mother Church
The following is a summary of the meeting on Science and Health held at The Mother Church on Sunday, March 28, and conducted by and :
Mr. Talbot: We'd like to talk and think together with you today about Science and Health as it relates to the Bible, about the author of the book, about its impact on mankind, and about the role each individual reader of the book has to play.
Mr. Thorneloe: Science and Health is having a transforming effect on the world because it springs directly from the Bible.
Mr. Talbot: I've found myself thinking about how the human mind sometimes anticipates something, but then gets such a rigid view of how it has to happen that it misses it. People anticipated the coming of the Messiah, the Saviour. Yet, when Christ Jesus arrived, they missed it. A child in a manger? That's the Saviour? That's not what they expected—maybe a king to lead their country to great things. I think it's happening today, too.
Mr. Thorneloe: Yes. In what is recorded to be Christ Jesus' final discourse with his disciples, he prophesied the coming of the Comforter. We're promised by the Master that this Comforter, "the Spirit of truth," will "abide with [us] forever" (John 14:17, 16). Elsewhere he said, "The night cometh, when no man can work" (John 9:4). He must have foreseen that after a couple of hundred years or so, spiritual healing as a natural part of Christian practice would largely fall away. But the Comforter will "abide with you for ever." No night is ever going to engulf the Comforter. Jesus said so. He also said, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26). Mrs. Eddy didn't invent what she wrote in Science and Health. She described herself as "a scribe under orders" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 311). The divine Science recorded in her book is the Comforter, which the Father has sent to "reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8). The Comforter shows Christ to be ever present with us, to "guide [mankind] into all truth" (verse 13) and to "glorify" Christ, Truth (seeverse 14).
Mr. Talbot: The coming of the Comforter evidences the dawning of the Christ, Truth, within individual human consciousness. And healing is an inevitable outcome of the coming of the Comforter. Sometimes I've thought about that when healing has not come quickly. The situation might be calling on us to think more prayerfully about Jesus' promise of the Comforter. Wouldn't an unhealed condition almost be a statement that Jesus' promise was false; that in this particular instance the Comforter was not going to teach you all things— that is, just exactly what you needed for the healing? Yet his promise was that it would teach us all things. If we cherish that concept, that can open the door to healing.
Mr. Thorneloe: You can hardly turn a page in Science and Health without seeing some reference to the Bible.
Mr. Talbot: As a matter of fact, I would say those two books have a kind of marriage with no possibility of divorce. They are wedded together.
Mr. Thorneloe: One of the ways they are most tied together is with the Lord's Prayer and the spiritual insight Mrs. Eddy brings to it in Science and Health (see pp. 16-17). There she has the Lord's Prayer with one line of the spiritual interpretation under each line of the prayer—an illustration of how the Bible and Science and Health are absolutely and completely linked together. I have found this is a beautiful way of sharing Science and Health with others.
Some little while ago I appeared on a television talk show with two doctors. One had a plaster cast on one of his legs. During the show I shared some thoughts about the Lord's Prayer and its spiritual interpretation. At the end of the program, the doctor with the cast asked if we could have some more time together. So we had a meal together and spent the whole time talking about the Lord's Prayer, with its spiritual interpretation. Later in that week this doctor came up to me after one of my lectures on Christian Science and said, "Look, I'm wearing an ordinary shoe. I prayed with the ideas we discussed. All pain left, the swelling went down, and I could feel a change taking place." Then, with a lovely twinkle in his eye, he said, "This must have been one of your spiritual healing things!"
We can thank God for revealing divine
Science to our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy.
I love her approach to the book. She was
continuously reading it—with joy, with
anticipation of good, with a willingness
to learn from the ideas in Science and Health.
Mr. Talbot: I think it was an example of the Comforter coming to that individual's consciousness and teaching him just what he needed to know for that healing. It came through divine Science. The concept of healing is woven throughout both the Bible and Science and Health.
Mr. Thorneloe: Mrs. Eddy says "the Bible contains the recipe for all healing" (Science and Health, p. 406).
Mr. Talbot: In the chapter called "The Apocalypse" in Science and Health she makes reference to the "little book" mentioned in the book of Revelation. She asks, "Did this same book contain the revelation of divine Science...?" Then she says: "Take divine Science. Read this book from beginning to end. Study it, ponder it" (p. 559).
Mr. Thorneloe: Just before that she quotes the Bible: "Go and take the little book.... Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey" (p. 559). We like the honey, but even some of Mrs. Eddy's students went away from her when they saw the demands that Christian Science makes on individuals. But these demands are natural. They're health-giving. They stir thought to accept God's allness in our lives.
Mr. Talbot: I think it takes courage for people to welcome the Comforter into their lives and respond to the demands it makes.
Mr. Thorneloe: Science and Health, along with the Bible, is showing you and me how to pray, how to live, and how to heal. Science and Health has specific chapters showing us how to deal with the concepts of spiritualism, animal magnetism, as well as marriage and other topics. Throughout the book, Mrs. Eddy is explaining to us the true nature of God. And on the basis of her spiritual understanding of God, she teaches us how to see through lies about Him, and that promotes healing.
Mr. Talbot: Mrs. Eddy has charted a whole fresh course about the very meaning of healing. Many people traditionally have thought of healing as fixing things up, but she shows us what it means to be regenerated as well as made well—what it means for spiritual renewal to take place in our consciousness. She's also given us a new concept of what Church is and what a pastor can be. Christian Scientists find it quite natural to think of Science and Health and the Bible as their pastor—a pastor that never takes a vacation. This pastor is right there on the bedstand anytime you might need it.
Mr. Thorneloe: One woman told me that when she was first presented with Science and Health she felt she wasn't ready for what it taught, so she tossed her pastor into a cupboard. But when the need came, the pastor was still there waiting to help.
Mr. Talbot: When Mrs. Eddy was a child, she became very ill with a high fever. Her father's thought was not particularly conducive to healing, but her mother's conveyed a sense of God's love that did open the door to the healing that came. I think that healing signaled something for the book she was going to write, because it helped to free her from the harsh Calvinistic doctrine that her father held of predestination. That tells us something about the book and its liberating effect, freeing us from a whole range of mistaken theological views.
One night I was struggling with a physical problem. As I prayed, I glimpsed something of what I thought it must have cost Mrs. Eddy to write Science and Health, and I felt such gratitude to her for giving me that book. Right at that moment the symptoms just disappeared.
Mr. Thorneloe: Gratitude is so important. And we can thank God for revealing divine Science to our Leader. I love her approach to the book. She was continuously reading it—with joy, with anticipation of good, with a willingness to learn from the ideas in Science and Health.
Mr. Talbot: If Mrs. Eddy could feel that way about ideas that she was discovering in the book, shouldn't we feel that same kind of discovery? It's the human mind that doesn't want to know.
Mr. Thorneloe: It's the human mind that skips over passages in the Bible Lesson because they're very familiar.
Mr. Talbot: Maybe that's the time we really need to be praying for humility.
Mr. Thorneloe: Yes, a childlike receptivity—a genuine sense of humility that will listen. I know of a twelve-year-old girl whose parents were told by a doctor that she needed an immediate operation on her feet or she would be crippled for life. This youngster was introduced to Christian Science by a neighbor, and she obtained a copy of Science and Health. She dipped into the book and found specific ideas that would help. All pain left as she acknowledged God's healing presence and power. And within two or three days of study, both her feet were completely healed. Because of that healing, all seven members of her family started to attend the local branch church.
Mr. Talbot: Don't you think sometimes we tend to put limitations on ourselves in determining how easily we'll reach out with this book to those who are truly hungry for it?
Mr. Thorneloe: As offspring of God, our thoughts come from divine Mind. So any resistance to cherishing and sharing Mind's ideas is not our thought, but mortal mind's suggestion. Two chapter titles in Science and Health—"Some Objections Answered" and "Animal Magnetism Unmasked"—show specifically what this book does. It answers objections to Science. It unmasks animal magnetism.
Mr. Talbot: The Bible speaks of the carnal mind as "enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). What is it that feels inclined to reject the very Comforter which Jesus promised? I would call it fear, an element of the carnal mind. People are sometimes afraid of what Science and Health says in accord with the Bible because it takes from them some of their most cherished beliefs.
Mr. Thorneloe: Mrs. Eddy dealt with the ignorantly cherished beliefs of others through Love. She always turned controversy into healing. And Science and Health teaches us to heal through divine Love. Let's make sure we don't let any magnets of criticism, defeat, lack, or antagonism, deflect us from our forward demonstration of the pure Science of Christ that this book contains.
Mr. Talbot: Sometimes when there are radical teachings, they push human thought into extremes. And yet, here's a book, Science and Health, with a radical teaching that actually moderates human thought— regenerates, blesses, heals human thought. Its students are thoughtful, credible individuals on the whole, making genuine contributions to their communities. And it's because of what the book has done and is doing for them. In a sense Science and Health is a book of spiritual tools, giving mankind insight into the Bible, and into how to heal.
Mr. Thorneloe: On a visit to Africa I shared some ideas with some fairly new students of Christian Science. A gentleman immediately jumped in and said, "I have a question." Then he described how he'd been on a train, and as he was looking through the open window, a piece of red-hot coal blew from the engine and landed on his eye, injuring his face and making it impossible for him to see. When he got back home a few hours later, he went for the copy of Science and Health he'd had for just a short time. He thumbed his way through until he arrived at the place where Mrs. Eddy says, "Accidents are unknown to God..." (p. 424). He prayed with that idea, and within twenty-four hours all trace of the accident had gone and he could see properly. "But I thought you had a question," I said. He answered, "Yes, I do. Did I practice Christian Science properly?"
Mr. Talbot: I wonder if there's more right here in Western society of that kind of willingness to look in new directions than we may have recognized.
Mr. Thorneloe: I'm sure there is. Mankind is beginning to see that materialistic means are not a way to find true relief from problems. That's not the Comforter.
Mr. Talbot: People are searching for tools—for answers—beyond what Western medicine offers. They are praying about their well-being.
Mr. Thorneloe: A hospital that deals with drug and alcohol addiction has a brochure that says the only ultimate answer to the problem of addiction is a spiritual one. They conduct a prayer group every day and frequently use the religious article in The Christian Science Monitor. This leavening is going on.
In communities throughout the world, individuals and groups can be found who are dealing with humanity's problems through love and prayer. When we look for it, we can find that element in thought that has a motive of love for one's neighbors, of desiring and cherishing the idea to help others find resolutions, to help find healing. It's thrilling. In Vancouver, for example, a group who call themselves "Street Kids" work to help save children on the streets who literally prostitute themselves to get money for drugs. I asked the group, "How do you find the strength to help these children night after night?" They said that they looked for the childlike innocence within each one. In another city, a man who helps homeless individuals said, "I never see a homeless man." When I asked him what he meant, he said, "Where the world sees a homeless person, I see individuality, strength, and worth, and I know God is the source of that."
Mr. Talbot: These individuals may not understand the Science behind this viewpoint, but aren't they feeling something of the Comforter coming to individual thought when they're looking for that Godlike quality in others?
Mr. Thorneloe: I feel they are operating on the basis that the Comforter is here. They can feel it, even if they can't explain it. They are saying, "There is an answer to these community problems. There is. And the answer is spiritual. God is its source."
Mr. Talbot: Our role may be to be more discerning, more perceptive, to better recognize the leavening power the Comforter is having in human thought.
Mr. Thorneloe: When we see the changes that are already going on through the leavening effect of Truth in human consciousness, we become more willing to share the book with those in need.
Mr. Talbot: I talked a few days ago with a young woman preparing to apply for listing in the Journal as a Christian Science practitioner. She had been praying—with expectancy—to bring healing to someone who was not a Christian Scientist. One day she got a call from her next-door neighbor who sometimes receives her phone calls because their numbers are so similar. While the neighbor had been away from the phone the previous day, a message intended for the practitioner had been left on his recorder. The caller had said, "Thank you so much for praying for me. I'm healed. I'm so grateful." Then her neighbor asked her, "Do you do knees?" The Christian Scientist blurted out, "Oh yes, God loves knees!" Well, this fellow had very difficult problems with his knees, and there wasn't anything further that could be done medically. He asked her to pray for him. The next day he was well. He was thrilled. He told her a few days later he'd been out jogging again.
There's a metaphysical point that can help us overcome any inertia that would keep us from moving forward with sharing Christian Science: the simple fact that divine Mind is ever active.
Mr. Thorneloe: As we acknowledge Mind as the source of man's activity, there's nothing to inhibit us from engaging in that activity as we go through our day. The Christ, the pure power of Love in action, is impelling you and me to respond to mankind's needs and heal the sick.
Mr. Talbot: What if we make a real effort, like a young woman who worked up the courage to share Science and Health with a neighbor who needed it? About half an hour later, while she was doing some gardening, the book came sailing over the fence. Well, the Christian Scientist continued to pray. She knew her neighbor was spiritually hungry for the Comforter's answers. Eventually the neighbor did accept the book. She found her answers. And within a couple of years she became an active member of a branch church.
Mr. Thorneloe: When we recognize the spiritual hunger and receptivity of our neighbor, we'll find a response.
Mr. Talbot: In a sense, most of us here today have had Science and Health placed in our hands—and it has had a major impact on our life. How willing are we to share that book?
Fruitage from these meetings—sent to the Office of the Publisher, the Writings of Mary Baker Eddy—is being shared in the Christian Science Sentinel.
