Article June 5, 1926 Issue

Church

GEO. SHAW COOK

ON pages 144 and 145 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says, "The Church, more than any other institution, at present is the cement of society, and it should be the bulwark of civil and religious liberty." Appreciating the truth of this statement, the earnest student of Christian Science devotes time, money, and effort to promoting the activity and harmony of the church organization of which he is a member. If he has progressed far enough in the study and demonstration of Christian Science to be a useful member of a branch church, the student will have discerned that this branch could not function, or even exist, except for the authority and vitality it derives from the parent vine.

When intelligently working for a branch church, the thought of the student reaches beyond the limits of the local organization to that greatest of all human institutions, The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. Thus his thinking becomes less circumscribed. He begins to grasp, in some degree, the vastness of the world-wide movement for the redemption and healing of mankind in which he is privileged to participate.

In the Historical Sketch, prefacing the Church Manual, our Leader says (p. 19) that The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was designed to "reflect in some degree the Church Universal and Triumphant." The "Church Universal" is, of course, the universal Christ-ideal, the infinite, eternal, invisible activity of divine Mind, defined on page 583 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" as "the structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle."

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