Article July 4, 1914 Issue

Are We Building?

LOUISE KNIGHT WHEATLEY

How does the Christian Scientist build a church? To be consistent, it is evident that he cannot build it out of matter, even though the continuous sound of the hammer and chisel may seem to authorize such a view. The world watches the so-called material structure rising day after day under the hands of the busy workmen, and it says, This is the church which the Christian Scientists are building. But the Christian Scientist knows better. He knows that the Christian Science church is already built, and that the edifice which is becoming visible to the community is but the outward type and symbol of that perfect spiritual idea, the real church, "an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." He also knows that unless he has this perfect model ever before him, he is not building at all. The church which the world sees may present an imposing appearance; it may be very large and stately, and it may have cost a great deal of money; yet one knows that unless he has built on the right foundation, he has done nothing, for a display of matter is not a Christian Science church. Unless the true substance has entered into every grain and fiber of its construction, our Leader says, "though you should build to the heavens, you would build on sand" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 135).

The building of a Christian Science church is a metaphysical process. Building is knowing; it is realization. Building, like healing, is a grateful acknowledgment of that which God has already done. Healing, as the Christian Scientist understands it, is not an attempt to change matter, so that sick matter shall presently become well matter; it is rather a looking away from matter altogether, to contemplate instead that perfect spiritual being which needs no healing, for its "builder and maker is God." Similarly in the building upon which the Christian Scientist enters, no attempt is made to change matter, to pile it up, brick by brick and stone by stone, until it finally assumes such shape that the world says, The church is finished. Rather does he look away from matter, to contemplate instead that spiritual creation, the real church, not being built, but already finished, not to be made perfect and complete, but, like the real man, to be seen and acknowledged as already perfect and complete, because God made it so.

One definition of church, as given in Science and Health (p. 583), is this: "Whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." We know what rests upon divine Principle, even the spiritual universe of which this Principle is the cause and creator. We know also that which proceeds from this same divine Principle, even the perfect ideas of which this spiritual universe is composed. As right ideas, therefore, take the place of human misconceptions, we are gaining the true concept of man, and are at the same time building the only church "which hath foundations." When Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," he directed thought to the spiritual structure which the true Christian Scientist is building, and which is being advanced to its completion only as he casts out of himself or others "whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." He is building it when he is healing himself or others from erroneous beliefs about God and man, when he becomes more gentle, more kind, more loving, more patient, more pure, more honest, more compassionate. He is building it when he acknowledges no separation between "my church" and "thy church," but recognizes only "our church," wherein all ideas are in accord, because they forever reflect the perfect Mind which formed them.

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