REPORT OF THE CLERK,
CHARLES HENRY GABRIEL
Fellow members:

Recall the time when our dear Leader was the only Christian Scientist in the world --a time when she couldn't claim even one member for her Church! She once remarked to an early worker: "I remember that when I first started this Cause I used to say, 'How happy I shall be if I can get only one interested in it.' And I said, 'Is not God interested in this, Mary?' And the answer came to me, 'God is interested, and because of it your Cause cannot fail." " 1 God is still interested. Mary Baker Eddy's Cause and her Church-cannot fail! How grateful she would be for the thousands upon thousands of spiritually committed members of her Church at this time! And what greater love can we show her than to carry her spiritual sense of Church to the world to help others to recognize this great source of good?

During the past year the Clerk and his staff have worked earnestly to achieve this high goal. They have refused to accept any beliefs of depletion or decline. The human picture is still one of fewer new members

coming in than those leaving us. The belief is that a larger percentage of our membership is an older one, and that we can lose many of these senior members each year. As to those who think they no longer wish to be members, more prayerful reaching out than ever before to show our love for them has considerably reduced this area of loss.

Since it is your privilege as a working member to share the responsibility for nurturing Mother Church membership, may we ask you to join with us here in denying the more common arguments that would impede its growth. We need to know there is no reluctance to rely wholeheartedly on Truth to heal; no unwarranted belief that medicine can successfully mix with Christian Science; no thought that another church will express more outgoing warmth

and love than ours does; and, perhaps more than all else, that no member can slip from the standard of Christian Science and therefore believe he can't in good faith remain a member. We make it our business here at headquarters to reverse and correct these aggressive whisperings of mortal mind as we hear them. Sometimes through letters over a period of months-sometimes through telephone visits with the Clerk himself-a membership has been saved, and sometimes a life.

What can you do? You can help us by including the membership of The Mother Church in your daily prayers, not so that numbers may increase-God will provide the increase-but that the ways and means for sharing Christ, Truth, with our neighbor will unfold. You can watch for opportunities to shepherd a stranger into the land of Christian Science; you can guide him right into Mother Church membership when he is ready.

Of course, we realize that vigorous activity must be evidenced here in Boston if cheerfully report that our Church services it's to be expected in the Field. And so we

and lectures show an increase in attendance.

Strangers are appearing—many of them young people. Our local members are more actively employed in meaningful committee work; our meetings are lively and relative to the needs of the community; and our well-located Reading Rooms are visited by many new inquirers into Christian Science. Shortly The Mother Church, in cooperation with Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, will open a Reading Room in Roxbury, where so many people of various races reside-all part of the love of our Church for its neighbors.

Important as all of this is, nothing can compare with our neighbor's witnessing one good healing to encourage him to join our church. Mrs. Eddy once wrote: "Unless we have better healers, and more of this work than any other, is done, our Cause will not 'stand and having done all stand.' Demonstration is the whole of Christian

Science, nothing else proves it, nothing else will save it and continue it with us. God has said this and Christ Jesus has proved it." 2

1 Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving C. Tomlinson, p. 45; 2 p. 46.

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY,

READ BY HOWARD PALFREY JONES, CHAIRMAN This is a realistic, hard-hitting report, containing no easy optimism. We're facing serious problems.

The Christian Science Monitor is in the red. This condition has existed for many years. It's time it was healed.

The facts are these: The Monitor's prestige has never been higher; its circulation level is at an all-time high. But even this level isn't high enough to attract the amount of advertising required to put the paper on a paying basis. Inflation, higher costs, inadequate revenue, present us with the kind of challenge Christian Scientists have always met. It's time we demonstrated supply.

We all know this can be done-we've all made this demonstration in our own individual experiences time and time again. Mrs. Eddy demonstrated supply for The Mother Church and the entire movement. The Field under the inspiration of The Christian Science Board of Directors is effectively providing for the construction of the new Church Center. And the Publishing Society is developing a plan for moving the Monitor into the black. It will take specific metaphysical support and dedicated work from all of us.

We're all shareholders in the Monitor. It's our paper. It's a spiritual spearhead of our movement. The mission of the Monitor is to inform and transform society. And it's doing this. The series "Crisis in the Courts" was the basis for judicial reform in seven states. "Children in Trouble" stimulated legislative action in six

states to help meet the problems of juveniles. In Delaware and South Carolina, a complete overhaul of the method of handling juveniles has resulted. The National Park series was the basis for a new approach to long-range planning by the United States Department of the Interior in this area of conservation. It also resulted in Robert Cahn's appointment by President Nixon to the President's Council on Environmental Quality.

I mentioned that we're developing a plan. One of the first steps in its long-range implementation has been taken this year.

For several years the mail delivery service in this country has been deteriorating. In the last two years alone more than two hundred passenger train schedules have been canceled. This has adversely affected the delivery of the Monitor. Many of our subscribers were receiving the paper three or four days late. Meanwhile, offset printing technology has progressed to make possible higher quality printing than can be done on our present presses.

A year ago our Los Angeles and London contract plants converted to offset printing, and we immediately began to search for similar facilities in other parts of this country. This search culminated in January with the first printing of the Monitor in Chicago, and only three weeks ago we began printing the Monitor in offset printing plants in Somerset, New Jersey, and Beverly, Massachusetts. This means that all the Monitor's editions are now printed in plants outside Boston and all by offset. Not only is its delivery improved, but it is now the first major newspaper in America to have all its editions printed by offset. This process will enable us to take advantage of the latest technological advances in photo-composition and high-speed transmission of copy.

The Monitor will continue to focus on the problems of our society and hammer out solutions to those problems. Its editorial columns must be guides for government policy makers. Its views must not trail the news; they must make news. Its job is to help reshape the world.

Our other periodicals have begun a season of renewal as they continue to carry out more fully Mrs. Eddy's Manual instruction that they be kept abreast of the times 'see Art. VIII, Sect. 14). The current word is "relevant." The articles in The Christian Science Journal, Christian Science Sentinel, and The Herald of Christian Science dealing with youth and its problems, the newold challenge of animal magnetism, and drug difficulties also such features as "Church in Action" and interviews all these contribute to this "relevance." A fresh spiritual vitality, combined with effective promotion, has resulted within this past year in a 2 percent increase in circulation for the Sentinel and a 5 percent increase for the Journal.

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Will this increase continue? Will it gain momentum? The answer depends whether the Christian Science movement itself gains momentum. It's up to us. The truth is here. Principle needs only to be applied and the right human footsteps will follow.

In the words of Mrs. Eddy, "The right way wins the right of way, even the way of Truth and Love whereby all our debts are paid, mankind blessed, and God glorified." Christian Scientists are solution people; Christian Science is a people-topeople religion. It has continued to demonstrate for more than one hundred years that the power of God heals man physically as well as morally and is the most effective agent in healing disease as well as sin. It is this message of the Christ, Truth, that continues to be brought to the world by our periodicals.

And now on behalf of the Trustees, indeed of all of us, I want to pay tribute to the dedicated woman who has been responsible for the editing of these periodicals for nearly a quarter of a century— Helen Wood Bauman. Mrs. Bauman has asked to be relieved of her duties as Editor in order to devote her full time to the teaching and public practice of Christian Science. We in the Publishing House shall miss her. Her contribution to

the success and the high spiritual standards of our periodicals is too well known for me to add any words of praise.

At the same time, I want to extend a warm welcome to Carl J. Welz of San Francisco, California, who will return to the Publishing Society to succeed Mrs. Bauman as Editor.

This report began with a statement regarding the deep problems we're facing, particularly in regard to the Monitor. But these problems are molehills compared with the mountains that were moved by our Leader when she first proclaimed God's message to this age. They will disappear as we love our neighbor as ourselves, as we see all men in God's image and likeness and communicate with the world in this spirit.

1 The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 232.

The congregation then sang Hymn No. 82.

tian Scientists in the Field, the emphasis was on spiritual activism translated into the compassion of church-inspired activities. Among those depicted were two instances of reversing Sunday School decline, the establishment of a "mini" Reading Room in a ghetto area, the work of translators in connection with Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy as well as with periodicals issued by The Christian Science Publishing Society, and international lecture work. Several of the people interviewed told of the natural steps which led to their entering the public practice of Christian Science.

Extracts from the film's sound track convey the flavor and fervor of "But What Can I Do?"

From Louisville: "Really it boils down to one's love for humanity. If you have enough love for humanity, you'll go out and ring doorbells and invite people and get your hands dirty occasionally. If you don't, then you can't do it-that's all there is to it."

From London: Vigorously extending Sunday School hospitality has "perhaps wakened one a little bit to the fact that.. we have some form of duty towards the outside world that we're only beginning to touch on—and not only an individual duty but perhaps a corporate duty of the church." From Porto Alegre (Brazil): "I think the most important thing is that people feel they can come to the church and be welcomed . . . and so they are sending the children to Sunday School. They also come to the lectures. And the healings they have are wonderful because they have found... that they are part of God's love."

From New York City: "We went into the ghetto area, Spanish Harlem, and just rang doorbells and handed out handbills to people inviting them to the lecture. And I have never seen such warmth and receptiveness and gratitude. I felt right then and there that if I could do anything to help to bring Science into the community I would certainly try."

From Indonesia: "Our people are a very loving people, a very sharing people. So when they read the articles in the Bentara,

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From Japan (concerning the need for more reading materials in Japanese): "We don't know exactly how it is going to come, but I think it has to be an expression of our love to the community and to the world."

From the Manager, Committees on Publication: "We've got to learn to be the family of man. . . the children of God. 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God.' We can't succeed if we just see ourselves as the American sons of God. It's got to be the world sons of God, the universal sons of God."

From Mauritius: "All the world is willing to listen to any message of good when it's given with love. I make no difference between Christian and non-Christian on that account. It is, we tell them, the God that heals and it is the God of all religions."

From Auckland: "I walk up Queen Street thinking about this massive public thought around me. What is it thinking? How can I leave just a little bit of illumination in it? How can I just leave a little bit less fear here? Father, show me the way to do it. There is no greater work that we could be doing no finer work-than practicing Christian Science."

From Malawi: "There is only one thing that I desire to do, you know, something that I always pray for. I always pray, 'Here I am, Lord. Use me.' That will be realized, of course, one of these days I feel, and I would know exactly what to do. . . . You hoe the field, then plant the seed, push it into the soil. You cannot make it grow but you have to wait, you know, wait for a time and then the seed will grow."

Two points in particular stand out from the film we've just seen. First, that the world is knocking at our mental door, asking us to do everything we can to help it find the solution to its urgent problems. Secondly, that the healing of collective as well as personal problems comes through the work of individuals.

The immediacy of our individual responsibility to contribute to the healing of our local, our national, and our world needs is clear. It won't let us rest-nor should it. We know that no individual or collective problems can ever be solved through ignoring them or remaining aloof. We must specifically face up to them and nullify their false claims.

But what's the temptation as we view our world today? To become bewildered by the complexity of its many problems. To feel frustrated at the continuing delay in finding solutions. To throw up our hands and ask "What can I do?" in the face of increasing lawlessness, violence, racial strife, poverty, pollution, and wars. We don't have

to ask "What can I do?" We know what we can do if we love enough to do it.

We can pray. Christian Scientists know how to pray. The question is, Are we praying? Are we really seeing through the false claims of evil which seem to dominate much of today's humanity? Are we quick to recognize and realize the infinitude of omnipresent good, which dispels the illusions of material sense? James certainly knew what he was talking about when he said, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." How fervent, how effectual, are our prayers?

Are we knowing daily that Mind, through its Christ, will unfold to human consciousness the spiritual ideas that solve these problems? Are we specifically dealing with them in our metaphysical work? Are we convinced that metaphysical involvement is of first consideration in their solution?

These are urgent questions pointing to the unique position Christian Scientists hold in the world today. Whatever situation we find ourselves or our world in, we're the practitioner to that situation. And we may be surprised to find how often the resistance to Truth isn't in the thinking of those with whom we come in contact but within our own thinking-that this is where it must be handled metaphysically. Our work is to see through the appearances of the human mind and to discern the reality, which the divine Mind alone envisions. We need to listen for the still, small voice of Truth to tell us what we need to know and to do.

What couldn't we accomplish for our world today if we would individually reach out to the guiding intelligence of man and the universe to find the remedy for all our national and international crises! We must face up to this. There's no merely material solution to these pressing problems. There never will be.

All the police forces in the world aren't enough to stop the lawlessness and violence bent on destroying our society and institutions. There are no federal, state, or local agencies that can heal racial strife. All the