Those individuals who rise above mere scholasticism find their church everywhere, because it is really in Mind, not in matter. Mrs. Eddy writes on page 256 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal."
True religion can find its church by the roadside as well as in a church edifice. When a neighbor has fallen among thieves, the good Samaritan, unlike the priest and the Levite, straightway binds up the wounds, pours in the oil of gladness and the wine of inspiration, sets the disabled one on his beast and takes him to the inn for protection. This ever readiness to help and heal is greatly needed in the world to-day, and is finding much to do by the roadside. The most efficient work transcends the trammels of what the world believes to be efficiency. Christian Science does not wait for permission from material sense nor from mortal law in order to be useful, but rises to its task guided by Spirit. Obedience to God, gratitude, and compassion are working marvels while scholasticism disputes about nonessentials and loses itself in unimportant details.
Religious movements are constantly faced by the danger of becoming pedantic. The dogmatical and problematical seek to obscure the inspirational and so to arrest progress. The downward road which certain words associated with religion have traveled illustrates this tendency. Anciently the Greek ecclesia meant the popular assembly in which every free citizen could vote. It was adopted by the early Christians to mean a church or a congregation, but to-day the word ecclesiasticism denotes that peculiar state of mind which worships the material church organization and seeks to establish special privileges for it. The word scholastic, which originally merely defined the characteristics of scholars and schools, is to-day associated with the debates of those super-subtle theologians, the schoolmen. The intrusion of speculation into religious life drives away spiritual science, and intellectualism falsifies spiritual insight. These misconceptions of Christianity keep the cross from being superseded by the crown, delay the hour of victory, fasten more securely the bonds of fear and superstition upon the sick and sinning, and close the door of human consciousness against the Christ.
