Many an observant traveler has been wonderingly impressed with the number of Christian Science churches which are springing up in every quarter of the world. To a student of Christian Science these structures are expressions of gratitude to God on the part of the beneficiaries of this teaching, and in noting these symbols of spiritual growth and progress, his thought may revert, as did that of the writer, to the words occurring in the seventh chapter of I Samuel, where we read that when the prophet was returning with the people of Israel after a great victory over the enemies of Truth, as symbolized by the Philistines, he "took a stone, and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
When the Israelites crossed the Jordan, they took stones from the middle of the river, and brought them over and established a monument; and many other instances are recorded of the erection of such memorials. Samuel set up this rude stone, not for the purpose of inspiring the people with a sense of their own courage or patriotic devotion, for all the preparation that had been made for this struggle with the enemies of God was of a spiritual nature, but that all Israel might look upon it and remember that the arm of the Lord had delivered them; that hitherto the Lord had helped them.
For nearly half a century, since the truth of God's healing power dawned upon the consciousness of the Discoverer of Christian Science, its beneficiaries, like Samuel, have been gratefully setting up monuments of healing and deliverance, which voice again the words of the prophet. Every stone in each of these structures may be said to symbolize a given individual's gratitude to Christian Science for healing, and especially for the new birth, the light of life that has banished prenatal darkness, for the dawn of conscious emergence into a new understanding of Truth; for a new sense of manhood and dominion over evil, and the more heroic obedience to divine law which has taken the place of a craven submissiveness to human will. Every experience is worthy of some external recognition, even as we set up in our own consciousness the memorial that ever prompts us to say, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
