Articles

One who serves the Cause of Christian Science, whatever the service may be, serves God, and the spirit in which the service is rendered determines its worth. The opportunity to serve as Reader in a Christian Science church or society is a sacred one.

It is related in Luke's Gospel that Jesus, after his return from Jordan, where he had been baptized, and after his conquest over the temptations in the wilderness, "returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. " "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day," and opening the book of the prophet Isaiah, read from it the words of the Messianic forecast: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Observation shows that many persons, ourselves often included, have quite a habit of believing that their discordant conditions, their misfortunes, their unhappiness, even their sickness and sin, are due to other people's thoughts or actions, to surroundings or circumstances. This is a much more serious fault than is usually realized.

Earnestly exhorting the Thessalonians to watchfulness, brotherliness, and patience one with another, Paul counsels, in words that ring with commanding power, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. " Mary Baker Eddy in splendid confirmation of this statement writes: "Watch, and pray daily that evil suggestions, in whatever guise, take no root in your thought nor bear fruit.

For centuries the Jewish people looked forward with joy to the coming of the Christ, prophesied from early times. While believing their prophets, they had a mistaken sense of how the Christ should come.

An examination of the text of the New Testament shows plainly that it contains many words which are entirely unknown in what is commonly called Classical Greek. For many centuries, the translations offered for such terms were mainly conjectural, owing to the fact that scholars had not been able to discover manuscripts composed in the more colloquial Greek used by the New Testament writers — manuscripts which could provide illuminating parallels to the unfamiliar words and idioms which perplexed the translators of the Bible.

What a wealth of promise the hope of happiness holds out to heavy hearts and to those discouraged by problems of lack, illhealth, discords of every nature! And how we rejoice when we first learn in Christian Science that not only may we acquire true happiness, but we may keep it; that it is not elusive or delusive, but is an everpresent reality, available to one and all, because it is bestowed by God, the fount of all good, and is included in His eternal plan for all of His children! Surely no one would deny that to be serenely happy is a desirable state of consciousness. Yet many believe it is an unattainable boon, forever beyond their grasp.

God and His expression constitute everything there really is. From this it follows that matter and everything material is unreal.

The fact that God's creation is complete is conclusively stated at the beginning of the second chapter of Genesis: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.

Frequently one hears among business acquaintances the timeworn query, "Are you making a living these days?" To human sense this seems to be the paramount question. From the standpoint of Christian Science, however, "making a living" is viewed in an entirely different light.