Articles

MY INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE came about this way: My husband and I had both gone to a Sunday School as children, and had been churchgoers as teenagers, but as soon as we became adults we stopped attending church. We preferred to sleep in and then have brunch late Sunday mornings.

In these pages we've gathered several shorter items — articles of less than a page in length and excerpts from longer manuscripts that offer useful, inspiring insights. We hope you enjoy this kind of short-form nourishment in each issue.

THOSE WORDS WERE SPOKEN by a head usher at The Mother Church, after each usher's meeting twice weekly. There were healings at The Mother Church services, of course, but as a new member of the usher staff, I had not seen any, and muttered about it too often.

" AND JESUS WENT ABOUT all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people" ( Matt. 9:35 ).

DURING THE PAST WEEKS, MONTHS, AND YEARS, I've been thinking about Jesus' command, "Get thee hence, Satan" ( Matt. 4:10 ).

IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE I'M DELIGHTED TO HAVE a religious practice that steadily nudges me to grow and develop spiritually. A way of thinking and living that increasingly proves to me the truth of its fundamental theology: that because God is absolutely good and has created everyone and everything in His own perfect likeness, evil—however realistic it seems to be—is no part of God's creation nor a reality of anyone's experience.

IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SOMETHING THAT CAN BE SPOILED by less than perfect people and the complex pressures of changing times? The truth is that however badly something seems to have sidetracked someone's intuition of good or interfered with the desire to follow Christian Science, neither God nor man, who is the creation of God, have been compromised. They're always there to be found.

THE OTHER DAY, A FRIEND TOLD ME she sometimes finds herself feeling critical of a fellow church member whom she actually admires in many ways. She said these thoughts disturb her, but she has been unable to get rid of them.

Dear friend, the histor[ies] of our hearts were not unlike in major parts, But one in love and agony, Till Love divine made mine most free. I knew thy story ere 'twas told; The way affection gains its gold By furnace fires: the starless night That brings the morrow calm and bright.

In his article in this issue of the Journal (p. 27), Tom Black has brought out the crucial importance Mary Baker Eddy placed on Christian Scientists being alert to and dealing with the aggressive resistance to Truth she called "animal magnetism.