Article March 2, 1940 Issue

"She hath done what she could"

LOUISE KNIGHT WHEATLEY COOK

Christian Science branch churches are in various states and stages of development. Some have finished and dedicated structures, some have edifices only partly completed, others have not yet started to build; but Christian Scientists all know that, even before the first shovelful of sod is turned, the real Church, "the structure of Truth and Love" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 583), is already complete. Because church building in Christian Science is primarily a spiritually mental process, to make this fact appreciable to human consciousness is the real work of the builders.

So perhaps those of us, in our various fields of labor, who are endeavoring to establish the right idea of Church— "an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens"—will find much of value in connection with the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness, as recorded in the thirty-fifth chapter of Exodus. For in spite of the fact that the Israelites had but recently emerged from the Egyptian darkness of materiality, in spite of their past idolatries and backslidings, they had laid hold of some of those great fundamental truths which are essential to all safe building, whether in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and forty, or during the sojourn in the wilderness beyond the Red Sea.

Among the mental qualities expressed by those who built that first place of worship to the true and only God, the great I AM who spoke from the burning bush and in the thunder of Sinai, we find an impelling desire to build. We are told that they gave "willingly"; and there is no better way to start than that. "Take ye from among you," said Moses, "an offering unto the Lord: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it." You cannot build a Christian Science church with unwilling contributions. "And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the Lord's offering."

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Without Variableness
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