CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS are familiar with Mrs. Eddy's definition of "Church" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583), which reads in part, "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." She also speaks of it in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 126) as "the body of Christ, Truth." How reverent should be our contemplation of this sacred idea, this one holy, perfect Church, omnipresent, indestructible, founded upon the Rock, Christ, against which "the gates of hell shall not prevail"!
As we gain some understanding of this true idea of Church, realizing its immutably perfect nature, we love it, and thus we build this temple in our hearts; and so its symbol begins to appear in our human experience. As our concept of the spiritual idea of Church may at first be limited, so also, in the beginning of our religious experience, may be our perception of the purpose of church as manifested here on earth.
The true idea, Church, or the Church Triumphant, has no contests but the manifestation of Church on earth, or the church militant is continually fighting the holy wars, exterminating the false evidence of the material senses and demonstrating harmony and brotherly love. It is called upon to prove the power of good to overcome evil in the forms of hatred, envy, selfishness, dishonesty, false government, personal domination, hypocrisy, slander, egotism, sin, sickness, death, and so on through the myriad phases of the so-called carnal mind. Its mission is to overcome all that would both openly or secretly oppose the appearing of Church, "the structure of Truth and Love."
