Martin Broones, C.S.B., of
Beverly Hills, California
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
What we look for in life will shape our entire experience, Martin Broones, C.S.B., of Beverly Hills, California, told a Plymouth, Indiana audience Thursday Sept. 18.
To the sick person, to the unemployed person, to someone in search of a stable sense of home, Mr. Broones said, Christian Science asks, "What are you looking for?" The question served as the title of his lecture.
The good that men really need can be found in their true identity as God's children, Mr. Broones told the audience. The need for everyone, he explained, is to find and value this true identity by drawing nearer to God.
Christian Science teaches one how to find his "at-one-ment" with God through prayer, Mr. Broones stated. "When we are at-one with God we are at home!'"
He said that Christian Science "shows that our at-one-ment with God gives us health; it gives us employment; it gives us happiness and security."
The Bible, Mr. Broones commented, is full of accounts of men who knew what to look for and found it through prayer. Their experiences, he added, forwarded the spiritual progress of the human race.
As an example he gave the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob, fearful of an encounter with his brother Esau, whom he had wronged, turned to God in prayer. The prayer led to a change in what Jacob looked for and expected, Mr. Broones said, and this actually changed his nature.
Jacob found love, peace, and good in his brother Esau, Mr. Broones pointed out. The first expectation was of hatred and strife, but the change in Jacob's expectancy saved his life, Mr. Broones observed.
In the course of the lecture Mr. Broones gave several concrete examples of how individuals today have found the same kind of help from a better understanding of God.
He told of a former college wrestler who had been disabled in military service. The man was healed instantaneously of paralysis, Mr. Broones said, when a Christian Science practitioner explained that according to the Bible God had made man in his image and likeness. The veteran glimpsed the fact that his true identity was not disabled or impaired and this healed him. The experience also was the beginning of a fuller and happier life for the man, Mr. Broones added.
It was this spiritual concept of man, he continued, that Jesus looked for and found in others when he healed and helped them. The lecturer quoted from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy:
"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."
Mrs. Eddy discovered and founded Christian Science and wrote Science and Health as a textbook to be studied with the Bible.
Mr. Broones concluded: "There are many human concepts of being but there is only one view that allows for the living of abundant life. That is the view set forth in the Bible where we are told that God made man in His image, and God saw "every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Mr. Broones is on a tour throughout the United States and Continental Europe as a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship. He spoke in First Church of Christ, Scientist and his lecture was sponsored by First Church of Christ, Scientist.
[Delivered Sept. 18, 1969, at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 428 So. Michigan St., Plymouth, Indiana, and published in The Culver Citizen of Culver, Indiana, Sept. 25, 1969.]