IN all lands and ages men have lifted their hearts with deep yearning toward God and have striven to express in concrete form that which would be an unceasing reminder to themselves and others that God does indeed dwell with men. In primitive times an altar built by a devout worshiper told the passer-by that some one had reached out with eager hands toward God, that he had found Him, and left a rude memorial to record this fact. This, we are told, did Noah after the flood, also Abraham; while Jacob, at Bethel, erected a pillar in commemoration of his vision of the ladder and the angels. Later, Jacob commanded his household to put away all their strange gods. He also said, "Let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress." Does not this express in most fitting words the actual reason for the existence of every Christian Science church? It matters not how humble be the earthly setting of the altar, its real place is in the hearts of those who have, like Jacob at Peniel, seen God face to face, and whose lives have been preserved thereby.
There are many to whom the realities of being were first revealed at the family altar, when the long centuries were bridged by that very deepest feeling which ever comes to men, and which impels them, whatever their surroundings, to reach out for God, if haply they might find Him, even when they know not His nearness and have quite overlooked the tremendous import of Paul's words uttered on Mars' hill, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." Here be it remembered that as Paul declared to the Athenians, "God . . . dwelleth not in temples made with hands," for these no more represent the church than the mortal body does the man.
In 1894, when the corner stone of the original Mother Church was laid, Mrs. Eddy wrote these words: "The Church, more than any other institution, at present is the cement of society, and it should be the bulwark of civil and religious liberty. But the time cometh when the religious element, or Church of Christ, shall exist alone in the affections, and need no organization to express it. Till then, this form of godliness seems as requisite to manifest its spirit, as individuality to express Soul and substance" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 144). We are reminded of this when as a result of the world's great Armageddon struggle, all things and all men are being tested to the limit of their endurance, that the wood, hay, and stubble of the mortal builder may be consumed in the fervent heat of Truth and Love.
