Article November 18, 1911 Issue

BUILDING

M. G. KAINS, M.S.

In any large city, buildings which have survived their profitable usefulness are often torn down to give place to more modern, more profitable ones. Not infrequently, after the old houses and the débris have been cleared away, the earth is removed until the rock is reached, so that the foundation of the new structure may be placed upon a solid basis. In many localities the rock is so near the surface and the land has such a high value that the rock itself is drilled and blasted to the depth of many feet, thus insuring not only a sure foundation but a more or less considerable area which may be utilized by the occupants of the building; but not until all the débris, the soil and the blasted rock, has been removed, does the actual process of building begin. Then the foundation is laid and the superstructure erected upon it.

To look at the work during the process of demolition of the old building, during the period of excavation, or even while the new structure is being erected, one is almost sure to be impressed by the apparent confusion of everything. Here are piles of seemingly useless materials saved from the old house, there are heaps of broken rock, sand, brick, and lumber. To the untrained eye it looks as if no sort of order could be brought or wrought out of such chaos. The grimy men working here and there seem to be making slow progress, if any progress at all, from day to day, and yet hourly they are forwarding the work by their slow activities, and all are performing their parts in obedience to a definite. plan which was prepared before the first work on the old building or the ground began.

We are so accustomed to this modus operandi that we think little or nothing of it, yet it furnishes a lesson which may be of service in our study and application of Christian Science. When our attention is first called to this teaching as a mode of living, our mental ground is already encumbered with more or less undesirable thought structures which must be demolished. Yet these mental structures may contain many things that will prove useful in the erection of more worthy mental structures. In the work of demolition of the old, therefore, we must needs be careful not to destroy the useful with the useless. Those things which are certainly useless may be disposed of at once. Yet doubtless we will find many things which we will not value at their true worth, and these may be set aside for the time being, until we can determine whether or not they may be employed in working out the new plan.

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