CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23716, 14 August 1942, Page 3

CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST

ANNUAL MEETING AT BOSTON

“ANOTHER WAR AGAINST SLAVERY ” BOSTON (Mass.), June 8.

The great task now confronting a liberated America, which more than three-quarters of a century ago fought a four-years war to free the slaves, is to aid in working out the freedom of -the whole world from slavery, the Christian Science Board of Directors told several thousand Christian Scientists gathered in annual meeting in Boston to-day. Declaring that this would be the sentiment expressed by the nation’s martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, were he here to-day the directors pointed out that “through the ages tyrants have endeavoured to govern and control men by engendering fear” and quoting from Mary Baker Eddy’s work, “Miscellany” (p. 191), they further say “Persecution is the weakness of tyrants engendered by their fear, and love will cast it out.” The directors’ statement was the highlight of the annual meeting of the Mother Church, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, which annually draws thousands of visitors to the hub city from all parts of the world. This year, however, the audience was more localised because of unprecedented world conditions. The directors emphasised the worldwide emergency as presaging a more universal turning to spiritual enlightenment as the pathway of future world peace. Meeting in their Mother Church under the world-enveloping shadow of what is probably the gravest threat to political and religious freedom since the advent of Christianity, the visitors were reminded in a report by the Christian Science Board of Lectureship that the union of Britain and America was foreseen 44 years ago by Mary Baker Eddy, discoverer and founder of Christian Science, as the instrument through which the rights of free peoples everywhere might be permanently established and protected. This welding together of the two great democracies, under the impact of an international crisis, said the Lecture Board, is the consummation of the fond hopes of all Christian Scientists. The board alluded specifically to a poem written in 1898 by the leader of this world-wide religious movement, Mrs .Eddy, which reads in part as follows: “Brave Britain, blest America! Unite your battle-plan; Victorious, all who live it, — The love for God and man.”