so often when trying to say, "Thy will be done." Love's will could not be inimical to human happiness! The promise intrinsic in this new understanding of God and His will right then dissolved a dread of barren year succeeding barren year. It utterly destroyed the fear that obeying God's will would make her give up anything good.

She lost all desire to have a child or to gain any other preconceived goal. She simply felt a sense of trust and a sweet willingness to go on. All symptoms of miscarriage vanished instantly and never recurred. A practitioner who patiently helped dissolve much fear throughout the confinement and subsequent birth said she felt the major healing took place at the moment just described. While a medical doctor was employed in accordance with the law of the state, no medication or treatment was ever prescribed.

What had happened to make this a fruitful experience rather than another unhappy, frustrating one? Christian Science had revealed the supremacy and omnipotence of Love, Principle, which mortal, material beliefs had hidden. The silencing of human will quieted fear, and normal functioning resumed.

It is human will, never divine will, that brings suffering. It is human will that contends for the false evidence of the physical senses and motivates or moves error into our experience. More than mere willfulness, human will is a mighty wrongdoer. But its power disappears proportionately as mankind understand the supremacy and omnipotence of God, Spirit.

Paul wrote in a letter to the Romans, "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."4

The transformation that accompanies this "renewing of your mind" is the redemption of will. Habitual unwillingness, chronic indecisiveness, submissiveness to the tyranny of false relationships and habits

all yield as Truth is sought for its own sake. Human will is made to become the servant of Truth. An individual receives strength to break a habit, implement a decision, oppose injustice. And this strength is unvarying, unswayed by corporeal sense testimony, for it comes from God. It is a manifestation of His will.

As all our affairs come under the control of divine will through an understanding of the allness of God, or good, there is exhilarating newness to living. We begin to be free of a stubborn refusal to changeof doing things the same old way. We have happier times, for we are less vulnerable to the baser propensities of hate and lust that accompany our frustrations or our indulgence of self-will. We use better judgment in daily affairs. And as we act with less stress and strain, we experience less disease.

As we learn more about God and thus become more responsive to divine will, more is demanded of us. It was Christ Jesus' knowledge of the eternality of Life and the supremacy of Love that led him to the greatest triumph of his career. His triumph was not won without agony. For a brief time in the Garden of Gethsemane he must have felt that God's will was inimical to his own, for he spoke of his own will as surrendering to God instead of joyfully adopting God's will.

That brief hour is the only record of such a struggle in our Master's great career, and yet from this instance has emerged a theological misconception that often traps mankind into accepting a sense of separation from God. Essentially, the false concept is that divine will belongs to God and self-will to man, and that the two are in conflict. The actual understanding of God and of man's relationship to Him as divine Mind's idea saves us from this mistake.

Jesus' demonstration of divine will at Gethsemane destroyed for all time any reasonable doubt of the beneficent nature of God's will and its possible fulfillment in mankind's experience. Did not Jesus' com

plete acceptance of divine will lead to the resurrection and the ascension and enable him to become the Way-shower of salvation for all?

When we see self-will well up in ourselves or others, we can have much more healing patience if we recognize it as not God-given will or intent at all. And in the case of those who seem to be obdurate enemies we can wholeheartedly pray to understand that the divine will includes all animus, volition, and basis for action. We can pray to realize that the one Mind is expressed by all. In such prayers there is no destructive clash of wills.

Yielding to the divine will protects our desires and decisions. We are not so easily moved by personal, unworthy motives. We begin to have more control over appetites

and emotions. We are more willing to make the most of every day.

A growing awareness of God's unlimited power and supreme authority, which replaces rather than fulfills mere human will, leads to work of enduring and universal value. We no longer see our achievements as personal accomplishments. Our prayer "Thy will be done" becomes not a momentary concession but a spiritually enlightened way of life. Our struggles lessen, and we can say with the poet,

Mine inmost soul, before Thee inly brought,
Thy presence owns ineffable, divine;
Chastised each rebel self-encentered thought,
My will adoreth Thine.5

1 Science and Health, p. 597; 2 Matt. 6:10; 3 Science and Health, p. 17; 4 Rom. 12:2; 5 Arthur Hugh Clough, Qui Laborat Orat.

Church Building

WYNONA ASHTON

Most of us have found that a rewarding and satisfying concept of church cannot be gained merely by attending services. The recognition of church has to be developed in individual consciousness. This unfoldment is going on moment by moment. The services round out and complete our week of church thinking and living.

In all this, the dynamic force is the true idea, Church, as Mind knows it, unseen to mortal sense but progressively recognized by awakening humanity and made visible in experience by its effects. What we behold as an edifice is the evidence of the consciousness of Church held by a group of individuals.

How important, then, for each member to build and preserve a proper understanding of Church! This building must combine the beauty of holiness with a desire to bring this beauty into usefulness to

humanity. It is through devout consecration of thought that our church organization remains pure and strong. The love each member has for Church-love that is Christly enough to hold to the spiritually mental "structure"-keeps church activities from being contaminated by unspiritual tendencies. It keeps the doors open to meet the community's needs and to heal all who are in need of healing.

The Christian Science definition of "Church" given by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of Science and Health, is cherished by church members. It not only defines the nature of Church as an idea of the divine Mind but reveals the wonderful results that follow when this idea is active in our thinking. It reads:

"CHURCH. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.

"The structure of Truth and Love" can only be built by God. God must be our starting point if we are to discern this perfect structure in consciousness and then behold its expression in human experience. To keep consciousness forever praising Him requires holy tending. The desire to keep every synonym for God given in the Christian Science textbook expanding in our thought is a sound base for constructing or expanding Church in human consciousness. It will reveal the holy temple already built but becoming clearer and dearer to us as we behold its substantial nature.

What else can we do to help in this daily constructive work? Like Nehemiah we can watch. This dedicated worker allowed no material belief to deter him from the mental or physical construction of his work. Let us put into our daily lives more of Spirit and its harmonies and less of matter and its conflicts, more of Soul and less of personal sensitivity, more of Life's activity and less indifference. To keep such guard over our temple gates is most rewarding. It keeps our church body-every facet of it-under Mind's pure government. Consider our church affairs. Keeping our sense of church enfolded in Spirit gives the human institution a divine impetus and fresh attitudes that overcome material, outdated methods. It enables church work to go forward with renewed energy. Enfolding our church in the realization of Soul, God, conveys peace and permanence to all its activities. Soul-sense constantly restores the vitality of our work, exchanging corporeal concepts for divinely prompted activity.

Church committee and board work, when based upon a recognition of this holy "structure," draws its vision from di

vine Principle. Obeying divine Principle, which is also Love, keeps discords out of church business and allows nothing to proceed that does not rest on divine Principle. Directed by the one Mind, decisions are wise; they are loving because they rest upon divine Love.

Increasing our concept of Life gives our church affairs a sense of increased activity and routs halfhearted procedures, replacing them with unified, vigorous activity. And what of Church as embodying the attributes of Mind? A church body truly governed by this recognition would be ever conscious of right volition and impulse, ever God-directed in all its activity. It would be free from faultfinding or divided thought, and all members would be united under the one Mind. Constructing our recognition of Church on the synonyms for God keeps it maintained in Truth, in which no error holds sway, and protected in Love, which spreads its influence so wide that all mankind are welcome.

God has already built His Church. It is up to us to behold it as "the structure of Truth and Love" and keep this structure well preserved in daily thought. Then our temple consciousness will be truly praising Him. It is wise to check to be certain that thought in actual fact "rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." If in this checkup we find that such impostors as personal sense, pride, or oppression have been allowed to enter thought, we need to rule out these misconceptions.

Our Churches of Christ, Scientist, are built on true Christianity. If in any instance selfish, unchristian errors have invaded thought, Mrs. Eddy tells us what to do. She says of Christian Scientists: "They must renounce aggression, oppression and the pride of power. Christianity, with the crown of Love upon her brow, must be their queen of life.”2

It is sometimes suggested that it is difficult to maintain this Christian attitude in the face of church problems, especially those that involve differing opinions. Yet it cannot be so hard if we literally "rest"

upon divine Love instead of human argument or personal sense. And Mrs. Eddy writes: "Love is priestess at the altar of Truth. Wait patiently for divine Love to move upon the waters of mortal mind, and form the perfect concept. Patience must 'have her perfect work." 3

A silent, unfailing tending of the altar of Truth proves our love for Church and establishes harmonious human evidence. The divine concept, mentally entertained, always makes itself manifest in the human; and the visible church, patterned on Truth and Love, cannot help but afford practical "proof of its utility." Such a church lifts humanity Spiritward. It rouses its members from apathy, whatever its form, and allows Soul to lift consciousness to Truth, which casts out error and restores harmonious activity.

The visible church demonstrates its practicality and the Science of its Christianity by wiping out error, thus performing its God-intended mission to heal and save. Even though the error that invades our thinking appears to be a physical ill, it offers an opportunity to expand our consciousness of Church. How joyously each Christian Scientist can claim his part in Church as he begins his prayerful work

by knowing that he "rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle"!

We can indeed expect thought to be roused and our understanding enlightened until we behold perfect God and perfect man. We can expect every error, including all its symptoms, to be cast out. We can indeed expect the sick to be healed. This is the Christly activity of Church scientifically understood. Our human institution of church, having this Christly activity at its core, affords "proof of its utility" by healing-even full salvation from all error, sin, disease, and death.

Our Churches of Christ, Scientist, are here to fulfill their God-appointed mission. The doors of these churches are open throughout the world so that all mankind may demonstrate the blessings of divine Science. These doors are kept open by Christian Scientists who abide in the secret place of their own temple, their own recognition of "the structure of Truth and Love." There, in praise and adoration of God and love for man, these workers are willing to rejoice with the Psalmist and say, "I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings.'

1 Science and Health, p. 583; 2p. 451; 3p. 454; 4 Ps. 61:4.

TEACHER