Article March 22, 1919 Issue

A Personal Experience

MAUDE M. GREENE

My gratitude to Christian Science is great for many things realized in many ways, yet there is nothing at this moment for which I feel more profoundly grateful than for the new concept of church which it has revealed. A recent experience has afforded convincing proof of the extent to which my old concept has been uplifted and spiritualized. When the order came that, on account of an epidemic situation, all churches must be closed, I experienced a considerable sense of resentment and rebellion. The church services meant so much to me personally, and as I well knew, to a multitude of people, that I indignantly asked myself if there was any semblance of justice in depriving us of the help of these services in the time of our greatest need. I told myself that I was only entertaining a righteous indignation; that it was not only unjust but absurd to deprive people of a service the one mission and purpose of which is to heal disease and sin and to cast out fear, because perchance a few unenlightened people did not and would not understand that such a service could not possibly extend or spread disease, but must rather from its very nature destroy it, because of the declarations of divine law made and accepted thereat.

In this mental attitude I was only engaging in an endeavor to fool myself, since I knew that there is no such thing as righteous wrath; for true righteousness, which is right and spiritual thinking, cannot know or experience indignation or anger. I knew also quite as well that any indulgence on my part in this rebellious brand of thinking would not help me or anyone else, and certainly would not tend to open the doors of any church; so I sought a better part, a way of righteous thought. This I knew would help to bring about the proper adjustment on the human plane, so that right and justice would prevail for all people, and none would be robbed of the healing ministry of our church services.

As is invariably the case with students of Christian Science, refuge was sought in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and on page 583 was found the definition of church. I supposed that I already knew a good deal about this definition, but soon discovered that I had only made a beginning. As I read the familiar words, "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle," there came like a flash the realization that no one ever had been or ever could be deprived of "the structure of Truth and Love;" that this structure is a divine idea always present in the spiritual consciousness of man; that church is something vital in one's own consciousness, and something of which he can never be deprived. The doors of this structure have never been and can never be closed; they are forever and eternally open; no "ban" ever has been or ever can be put upon that which "rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle," for it is the expression of eternal, unchanging, ever present, ever operative law, that law which forever denies and casts out utterly the belief of disease of any name or nature.

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