IN these days of rapid progress and swift movement of events it may not be amiss, at times when questions of importance to the welfare of a church are under consideration, for its members to give themselves pause long enough to look things squarely in the face, rather than open the way to be swept off safe ground by hasty and ill-advised action. Centuries intervened between the promise spoken to Isaiah, "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste," and its fulfilment in the coming of the Christ, the divine idea, in the man Jesus.
The corner-stone of church building in Christian Science, whether it be the organization or the outward structure, is that moral and physical regeneration attendant upon the healing of the sick which is the fruit, the proof that the tree whence it sprung is good and not evil. This is the foundational work which must be done in every instance if the superstructure is to stand firm and fast, a place of refuge and succor to which the weary and heavy laden may turn their lagging footsteps and find the peace and rest they have so earnestly desired. The structure thus based may to human sense seem to rise but slowly, and the temptation to make use of more aggressive methods press hard, yet experience has proven that preaching alone does not meet the multiple needs of humanity; that only when it is substantiated by practical demonstrations of the healing and saving power of Truth is its existence justified and its continuance assured.
We need never lose courage on this point if we will but carry our thoughts back to the conditions which confronted our Leader when she essayed the formation of the church which was, as we are told on page 17 of the Manual of The Mother Church, "designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." The movement which today encircles the globe, whose earnest students are to be found in city, town, and hamlet throughout the civilized world, owes its inception, its growth, and its ultimate fruition in the redemption of mankind, to the healing work inaugurated and carried on by our revered Leader in the face of almost incredible scorn and opposition. It was by this means that she first won a hearing for the truth she had discovered, that she gathered about her a few faithful followers, that she sowed the seed which, springing up in good soil, "first the blade, then the ear," ripened into "the full corn in. the ear,"— The Mother Church and its wide-spreading branches.
