AFTER one has experienced the healing ministration of Christian Science, gratitude prompts the early desire to aid in the spreading of this gospel of salvation so that all mankind may share the blessings it bestows. The individual, having attended the church services and perhaps having observed the orderly functioning of the various church activities, has his attention attracted to these outward, visible manifestations as the starting point of church activity; whereas the fact is that these activities operate to the glory of the Most High, and minister to the needs of humanity only as it is apprehended that they have their source and their sustaining power in an understanding of God, good, and the mission of His Christ. As a consequence, the question is often asked by the young student of Christian Science: When and where should my activity in church work begin?
The teachings contained in the works of Mary Baker Eddy have caused such a radical change in our mode of thinking that in the light of this revelation even such simple questions as this cannot be answered in terms of time and place. As students of this Science we have begun the process of turning from a material sense of things to the spiritual; and in this journey heavenward, in which material thought must be reversed, the terms "activity" and "church" no longer retain exactly their old significance, but must be viewed in their proper light, in order to find a satisfactory answer to our query. Only as church work rests upon the groundwork of spiritual understanding can it be effectively helpful; merely mechanical functioning never achieves spiritually.
In this connection it is significant to recall that upon one occasion Jesus was about to leave the temple, the material house of worship, when his disciples came to him to show him "the buildings of the temple." Discerning the materiality of their thought, noting that their gaze was fastened upon the material structure, he turned to them and said: "See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." By implication, mightier than any sermon he could have preached upon the subject, he had turned their thought away from the material to the spiritual contemplation of temple or Church, as the one "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
