Article November 18, 1916 Issue

Loneliness

MARGARET ALLISON KENDRICK

Many times in the last few years it has been the writer's experience to be among strangers, without the privilege of attending a Christian Science church or the pleasure of associating with Christian Scientists, and being much of the time alone. After having admitted all my life that people were absolutely necessary to my happiness, such a lonely life would have seemed unbearable except for the help gained through the study of Christian Science, and even then there came a day when I realized that I must either rise above the thought of depending upon persons or else be unhappy most of the time.

In one of Mrs. Eddy's hymns (Poems, p. 13) are these words: "Father, where Thine own children are, I love to be." I interpreted them to suit my case, taking them to mean where Christian Scientists are. I loved the words, dwelt upon them, sang them longingly, almost mournfully at times, always justifying my sense of loneliness with the meaning I got out of them. One day, however, after a careful study of the Lesson-Sermon as given in The Christian Science Quarterly, and of what the words "the sons of God" really imply, the thought came to me that I had mistaken Mrs. Eddy's meaning; that the words I had so dwelt upon could not possibly be taken in a material sense. As I opened my thought for a higher understanding I saw very clearly that "where Thine own children are" must surely mean the consciousness of good, of Life, Truth, and Love, and not any material location or being in the midst of a certain class of people; not in a large place any more than in a small one; not where there are many people any more than where there is but one alone with God. I saw that God's creation is everywhere and that there is not anything else. Since that day the words of this hymn have held a very different meaning for me. They are inspiration to make a greater effort to be in that much desired place where God's ideas are, and to win my way there by right thinking, which is the only possible way this can ever be attained.

The paramount cause of my loneliness I had held to be the fact that I had no church home or church work. This problem too I have been wonderfully helped to solve through the study of the definition of "church" as given on page 583 of Science and Health. If the real church is, as Mrs. Eddy here states, "the structure of Truth and Love," it cannot be a material building reared upon a material foundation, but rather must be an idea in Mind and must be built in consciousness. So after all each one must build his own church with the help of God,—and what difference does it make where we are while we build it? The one important thing is that we build it.

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