Since my awakening to Christian Science in 1970, I have studied deeply the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, along with Mary Baker Eddy’s other writings. This naturally led to my becoming an active Christian Scientist, including serving at The Mother Church for the past several years, and previously in its branch churches.
Through this consecration I have gained an understanding of and a deep appreciation for Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of Church, which reads, in part: “The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle” (Science and Health, p. 583). This definition goes far beyond the traditional concept of church as a material structure or activity, and reveals it as an entirely spiritual structure, free of ritual and ceremony, supported and maintained by God, the universal, divine Principle, Love.
Many readers of the Journal know that Mrs. Eddy’s motive in founding her Church was to “commemorate the word and works of our Master [Christ Jesus], which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Church Manual, p. 17). She later wrote of The Mother Church: “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, our prayer in stone, will be the prophecy fulfilled, the monument upreared, of Christian Science” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 141).
