CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN THE WAR
come to put the work back onto a peace basis and to link up the soldier, sailor or demobilized man, who so desired, with the existing Christian Science organizations. In many places the local churches recognized the opportunity and opened their Reading Rooms to suit the convenience of the men after the closing of the War Relief Rooms, and in this way have undertaken the work of assisting the soldiers back to civil life. An enlarged concept of what War Relief work has meant to the movement and of what the movement can do for humanity has in this way been gained. From different parts of the country evidence has come in to show that the War Relief work has greatly strengthened the churches in the different localities. In some instances Christian Science Societies have been formed in towns where the War Relief activities have drawn the Scientists together and encouraged them to go forward. And not only have groups of Christian Scientists been drawn together in this service to their fellow men, but there has grown up a clearer consciousness of the unity of the whole Christian Science movement and of its great mission for the salvation of mankind.
The gathering of the harvest of the War Relief work is an impossible task, for like the good seed of the parable, the multiplying is beyond possibility of record, but there is manifold evidence that these activities have brought nearer the day when “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
248
