Article February 20, 1915 Issue

Our Church

GERTRUDE SMITH

"Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality" (Science and Health, p. 261). This is our Leader's wise caution when evil seems in any degree real to us. The material concept or body that we call church, is but a symbol of the spiritual idea of church as understood in Christian Science. Only in the perfect concept can we find ourselves "members one of another."

When through the door of realization we enter the sanctuary of Spirit and breathe its holy calm, all material views, opinions, and desires fade away, and we joyfully exclaim, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." To materialize our concept of church is to lose sight of the true church and "dwell in the tents of wickedness." Even a faint realization of the "house not made with hands," eternal in the heaven of divine consciousness, is a benediction beyond words; and a complete turning aside from the material concept of church to the spiritual must in time heal the body politic of an untrue manifestation.

A material sense of church is almost sure to cause faction and friction, to feed pride of opinion and human domination. Diametrically opposite is the church our revered Leader beheld,—the temple of universal Love in human consciousness. We have an inspired Leader who speaks to us in her written word. Her teaching leaves no important point untouched to guide and help us. The goal she made very clear, and the way to avoid danger in the footsteps to that goal she has plainly pointed out. We cannot be too wide-awake to the rich heritage of her teaching. Are we obedient, or do we believe that she is in advance of our day, or that she does not always mean exactly what she says? What must have been her prayer when she sent forth the word for democratic government in the branches? Was it not that the universal love of God be realized in a more inclusive opportunity for growth in service? The grace, growth, and persecution that come with serving in the church militant is truly a schoolmaster leading to Christ. There follows a clearer discernment of the impersonal, fleeting nature of evil, and of all that men call great, and there is expressed a permanent and abiding conviction of the reality of God, divine Love, and His unchanging law.

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