IN a letter addressed to First Church of Christ, Scientist, Cleveland, Ohio (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 195), Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written, "The praiseworthy success of this church, and its united efforts to build an edifice in which to worship the infinite, sprang from the temples erected first in the hearts of its members—the unselfed love that builds without hands, eternal in the heaven of Spirit." An examination of this statement shows clearly that Mrs. Eddy considered church building in Christian Science not only as the work of a collective unit called church membership, but also as an experience of each individual member. With a multiplicity of pressing questions confronting the members of a church that is contemplating building its own church home, —questions of finance, the selecting of an architect, the choosing of the type of structure,—the truth of Mrs. Eddy's statement as quoted above may not always be immediately apparent. Yet our Leader knew whereof she spoke; and many a worker in Christian Science has come to see the wisdom and correctness of her words.
An understanding of her statement is of far-reaching importance to all members of a Christian Science organization; for it enables them to place the responsibility, so far as they are concerned, not alone in the board of trustees or the building committee or the finance committee, but primarily in their own thinking and living. The responsibility therefore consists not, primarily, in paying one's quota of contribution into the exchequer, or in helping to select the right architect, or in assisting to determine the type of structure. Important though these tasks be, it will be found that they are readily, normally, and logically performed when, and as soon as, the prime responsibility has been fulfilled, the responsibility, that is to say, of first erecting the temple in one's own heart.
What does it mean, then, to erect the church in one's own heart or consciousness? It means the exemplification by each member of the true concept of Church, as defined, in part, by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583): "The Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick." The import of this exemplification may become clearer by following mentally the process of building.
