Branch Church News
SOMETIMES the student of Christian Science becomes discouraged because he believes that he is not making any progress, or, at least, very little. Then it is that he must look within his own consciousness to see what is seeming to deaden his spiritual sense and keep him from realizing "the joy of salvation.
Young people today are recognizing more and more the importance of attending the Christian Science Sunday School while they have the opportunity. Many are conscientiously putting into practice the truths which they have made their own through a faithful and consecrated attendance at Sunday school.
FAITHFUL, scientific teaching in a Christian Science Sunday School is more than a privilege, more than an enjoyable church activity, vastly more than merely obediently filling an appointment made by the governing board of one's church. It is a sacred trust, a divine demand for renewed consecration to our Cause.
The fact that no Christian Science church may be dedicated until it is entirely free from debt often draws favorable comment from the world at large. It also gives the church members an opportunity to prove what they know of the limitless abundance of good.
When one is asked for the first time to teach in a Christian Science Sunday School, if it has not been his earlier privilege to attend as a pupil, he is sometimes found asking himself: "How do I go about it? It is all so new to me!" The honest seeker will find, as in the solving of other problems, great help in the words of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 469) : "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind— called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality.
When a church organization is confronted with the desirability or necessity of erecting a church edifice, various practical considerations immediately present themselves. For example, a good location, the size of the building, style, materials, and many similar details natural in the circumstances.
THE Christian Science Sunday School is a vineyard where the tender plants of the Father's planting find nurture and care, to the end of a fruitful harvest. The husbandman who is privileged to work among the vines may well find it incumbent upon him to take the shoes from off his feet, for this vineyard is very holy.
The initial step for him who would gain a demonstrable understanding of Christian Science and find practical help therein is to make immediate use of the small understanding which he has already gained, putting into practice or demonstrating the rules that he has learned. Practice, which establishes profession, is demanded of him before he can go up higher.
Third Church of Christ, Scientist, St. Louis, Missouri It is not the purpose of this history to recite all the details of our beginning, progress, and attainments, but rather to refer briefly to the most prominent factors which have made it possible for us to dedicate our church to-day [May 4, 1919], with our burden of debt lifted, owing nothing but love and gratitude to God the great giver of all good, to Christ Jesus the Way-shower, to the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, and to our fellow men.
First Church of Christ, Scientist, Beatrice, Nebraska Interest in Christian Science was first aroused in Beatrice in the fall of 1884. A lady who had been confined to her bed several months was invited by a friend to visit her in Boston, Massachusetts.