Eternity, infinity, and unity constitute the three dimensions of the Church or body of Christ.
The first element of extension is linear, and as applied to the church suggests the idea of time, without beginning and without end. The first dimension is, then, eternity, immortality. The golden thread that runs through the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, binding them into one consistent whole, is the Principle of immortality. To Truth the only death is the death of error. The mission of Jesus, of whom it was prophesied, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench," was to teach and demonstrate eternal life. The divine Principle of immortality finds its pinnacle of expression in Calvary and the subsequent resurrection and ascension, and its prophesied consummation in the new Jerusalem of Revelation.
The second element of extension, suggests area, the idea of space. The corresponding second dimension of the church is infinity, universality. The love of God is universal. It comprehends and includes all people and things. In the life-problem of the translation of the material back to the spiritual, no thing is so small, no person so wicked, but that reversed and regenerated in Truth they find their rightful and necessary place in the divine economy and completeness. Infinity has no outside. Salvation is universal. "For they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them," is the prophecy of Jeremiah.
The third element suggests solidity, substantiality, the basis of which is unity, our third dimension. Unity, oneness, expresses the adhesion and cohesion of divine Science, whereby is demonstrated the universal fatherhood and motherhood of God, and the universal brotherhood of man. "The Lord our God is one Lord" expresses monotheism and is, as our Leader has pointed out (Message of 1902, p. 21),the bond of unity between Judaism and Christianity. "I and my Father are one" expresses the unity of God and man, God and His idea, which finds its correlative expression in Science and Health (p.. 276): "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God." St. Paul emphasizes this essential oneness in his letter to the Ephesians, when he speaks of "one body," "one Spirit," "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." And Jesus, in the sublime seventeenth chapter of John, utters as his parting prayer first for his followers and then for the world, "that they may be one, even as we are one."
The world has hitherto believed in and tended towards division. But the characteristic of our time is a manifest tendency towards unity, in business, in society, in religion, in science. Within our own ranks, the present year has been marked by the declaration and ratification of the unity between our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, and the Cause of Christian Science, as set forth in the revised Church Manual. For the assurance which she has given to us, her followers, by this open assumption of her God-imposed and world imposed Leadership, we are loyally grateful. We recognize in this one of three great unities: that between God and His idea, that between Christ and the church, and that between our Leader and the Cause of Christian Science.
Christian Science churches are to-day as islands in the world wherein it is both the privilege and the necessity of the members to demonstrate that eternity, infinity, and unity are the three dimensions of the Church of Christ. The church is the highest type of the body of Christ, and in unity is its substantiality. In union there is strength, because it expresses divine economy, effective co-operation. Division implies friction, waste, deterioration, and denies both eternity and infinity. In reality the only division is that of the kingdom of evil divided against itself that cannot stand. Our Cause is evidently, necessarily one. Loving brotherhood and unity in harmony and co-operation, is therefore a consummation which should characterize and abide in all our churches and societies. It is as high a proof as we can give of our appreciation of our Leader's labors for us and our Cause.
