"And the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there." Thus writes the prophet Ezekiel at the close of his prophecy of the establishment of God's temple on earth.
What is a city but a collective state of consciousness? Imagine a city wherein every individual is aware of the omnipresence of God, and expresses God. Would not that be a place where no discord of any description could enter? And let us bear in mind that a realization of the omnipresence of God comes through self-abnegation, which precludes the false sense of man, and sees only the true man. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 46), "In Science, man represents his divine Principle,—the Life and Love that are God,—even as the idea of sound, in tones, represents harmony."
We read in the Bible that the Church is the body of Christ. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583) Church is defined, in part, as "the structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." The true Church is not seen through the physical senses, nor is it expressed by material sense. The material structure is at best but the symbol of Church, which is spiritually perceived. Then, how impossible rightly to build a church by starting with the symbol!
