IT is a great privilege to be a worker in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, which is engaged in the joyous activity of building a church edifice. Money may enable one to erect a material structure, but money cannot reveal the true Church. Christ, Truth, coming with its saving, redemptive message to the heart of each member, must first lay the foundation and raise the walls in individual consciousness.
The real Church is defined thus by the inspirational Leader of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy: "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583). To find Church, therefore, one must go to the spiritually mental realm; and one finds its foundation in the truth taught by the Master. Paul says: "As a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
Let every member of a building church, therefore, first look to his own thinking to see how the foundation work is coming on. Is thought becoming rooted and grounded in the truth of spiritual sense, as taught and exemplified by the Galilean Prophet? Are we learning that God is Spirit, and that the material concept of existence does not present the truth about man? Are we looking to Christ Jesus as the Way-shower to real living and loving? If the answers are in the affirmative, we may know that the foundation stones in our "structure of Truth and Love" are being well laid; but let the builders test the ground upon which the foundation rests. No abiding temple can rise on the quicksands of dissension and political maneuverings. Only on the rock of Truth and Love is the structure secure.
