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It was the opening of new Christian Science Church at 6th / Lemon Street, Riverside California, on Sunday morning, February 24, 1901. The church cost $15,000 to build, considered somewhat modest even then.
Dedication Speech by Dr. A.A. Sulcer, First Reader
It has long been the custom amongst men to dedicate temples and churches to religious use. Nothing that the mind of man could devise or his skill execute, however massive or complex or artistic it may have been, has ever fully satisfied the votary in his desire to construct a sanctuary worthy of his god. Yet often, amid magnificence of setting, the climax of architectural skill, the profusion of cunning embellishment, the delicately subdued brilliancies of mural decoration, an amazing contrast has been presented between the wondrous temple and the divinity to whose worship it was dedicated.
Man, in the ruder stages of development, has ever pictured deity in a tangible, visible shape. “Birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” have been held in superstitious reverence, and have been sacrificed to as arbiters of human destiny. Not only has this tendency shown itself in the worship of “stocks and stones,” but even when intellect and spirituality have attempted sway, the devotee has more than once “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.”
Varied as have been the objects of worship, so, also, have been the rites and observances of the worshipers who have tried to please or propitiate by every conceivable device,—from living sacrifice to murmured liturgy, from the burning of incense or the beating of drums to the practical Christianity of well-doing, from self-inflicted tortures of the body to the uplifting of the soul in purest love and adoration. In the great drama of religious history numberless actors have taken more parts than one can with the fullest research realize, and the whole earth—more than now remains above its waters—has been the stage. Sometimes these actors have been arrayed as marshalled hosts grappling, each in the name of religion, in fierce and sanguinary conflict. Sometimes the scene was the Roman ampitheatre, sometimes the Aztec sacrifice. Sometimes it was the dungeon, with its unspeakable horrors and tortures; sometimes it was the cross or the auto da fe in open air. Sometimes it was the Egyptian embalmer, the voice of Memnon, the worker of miracles, the frenzied dervish, the hermit devotee, the monk, the nun, the evangelist—ancient or modern in vastly differing types; sometimes the ascetic, passing scores of years in silent contemplation of the awful mysteries of earth and heaven and the infinity of God, and endeavoring to wean himself from all things connected with the flesh.
Sometimes, the great cathedrals in which, under beautiful lights with softened colors we see devout worshipers and listen to music so sweet that we might almost imagine it to be the voicings and instrumentations of a heavenly choir. Sometimes seers and prophets and sweet psalm-singers have warned of evil and given us precepts which have lived and will continue to live through all the ages. Sometimes men, grandly endowed, teaching purity and veneration and love and right living, have appealed to the loftiest sentiments of the human mind. And, greatest of all in all the ages, “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named,” came the Prince of Peace, bringing to the world the Kingdom of Christ.
In place of dead formalism which stood only in “carnal ordinances,” he gave us the excellence of a living gospel. Through him arbitrary dogmas, sectarian bitterness, cruel, relentless, unforgiving strife, are destined to melt away and be forever lost in one unbroken strain of harmony and sacred unison,—
Till all thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame
born of a true conception of deity, of a purer faith, of a spiritual understanding of the ever-present Christ, risen, glorified, seen at last in the majesty of his power, in the beauty of his Love and infinite perfection, made known through the teachings of Christian Science.
This morning we have assembled, as so often our fellow-men throughout the ages have assembled, to dedicate a sanctuary and with it, let me hope, to dedicate our lives to the fulfilment of the human-divine ideal. We are not here merely to enthrone Deity in a house made with hands, but to enthrone in our consciousness a true conception of the true Divinity, that we may the better reflect His righteousness and truth. How well do we all know that it is not merely these walls, this roof, this altar, which are to be set apart from the defilement of worldly selfishness and aims; but in a larger, truer sense, the dedication to highest possibilities of that in us which is of the essence of the divine, the true temple of God, the temple of omnipotent, omnipresent Love.
And to-day, and all days, most cordially do we welcome you, of whatever manner of faith, who have come up to participate with us in the opening services of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Riverside, Cal. In its establishment our aim has been, no matter how much mortal frailties and errors may interfere, to establish in ourselves, and to help establish in others, the thought of Light and Life and Love which shall speed the passing away of error, and shall unveil Truth, health, and the beauties of the perfect man.
We feel, indeed, that
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
To one, at least, in our midst, it must seem the day for which all the days in the last thirteen toilsome years were made. It crowns the loving and ceaseless devotion of our local leader, whose high hope and faith have never faltered and whose holy purpose never swerved from Truth’s guiding. Her faith in it has been a lamp unto her feet, ever lighting the way, while her heart has been sustained and cheered on that way by the love and gratitude of those whose burden she has lightened, whose ills she has healed, whose hope she has made buoyant by her own strong, calm, unfaltering spirit.
Thirteen years ago, a stranger among us, she came so quietly, so unobtrusively, that amid the excited throng of tourists and speculators who then overcrowded all the cities and towns of Southern California, her personality was lost except to those amongst whom she labored. Her mission was that of an ambassador of Him whose kingdom is not of this world, is not measured or touched by mortal sense, is not subject to the vicissitudes of time is not bounded by mortality; whose kingdom is the plenitude of the Spirit, the universality of Good, the eternal omnipotence of Divine Love. The fallen column, the crumbling monument, may mark the place where once stood the throne of earthly imperators whose will seemed to men the supreme law, but the empire of the Master she heralded is one that no invading horde can conquer, that nothing in all the ages can destroy, and whose sway shall yet be young when time in its countless æons shall have passed away.
And this happy reward of her faithful work is no rare or exceptional case. Christian Science everywhere has been most richly blessed in the fruitage of its labors. Indeed, if we shall know it by its fruits we must acknowledge the scope and beneficence of its work. Under one of its many phases the organization has entered upon a church-building era. It is emerging from the obscurity of rented halls and private rooms to the occupancy of its own church edifices, and is both reaping and bestowing the benefit of larger opportunities for spreading the healing and saving Truth.
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Mother Church in Boston, was dedicated January 6, 1895. Since then the growth of Christian Science has been phenomenal, not only in this country but in Canada, Europe, Africa, and Australia, and branch churches are being erected at a constantly increasing ratio, many of them being costly and elegant structures. The Mother Church is the radiating point of all the branch churches throughout the world.
Towards those who have misunderstood us, misapprehended the life-transforming mission of Christian Science, we harbor no unkindly feeling. Over every manifestation of an un-Christian spirit we throw the broad mantle of charity. We do not mean to leave any place in our hearts for enmity or prejudice against others, we wish not merely to believe but to think no evil.
Our members have been generous in giving to this great cause, and many of our friends who are not Christian Scientists have manifested their generous sympathy by contributing to our church building fund. Contributions have also come unsought from other portions of the Field, demonstrating the oneness of Love which to-day is being manifested in a universal church of Christ, unlimited by any human boundary.
As we look back upon our wanderings through the wilderness “wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought,” we welcome this quiet resting-place, this oasis in our journey, as the Children of Israel doubtless welcomed at Elim the twelve wells of water and the shade of the three-score and ten palm-trees; and always not only our doors but our hearts will earnestly, warmly, lovingly open to every pilgrim who, in life’s journeying, may be drawn to our portals. And we devoutly ask the blessing of the Christ, not only upon those who may or may not hereafter worship with us, but upon you whose kindly presence cheers us here this day.
Our friends of California are to be congratulated upon the erection of this beautiful temple in that wonderful state which is blessed with so many material advantages and in which spiritual Truth is rapidly gaining prominent and substantial footing. The growth of Christian Science there has been rapid and healthful in a marked degree.
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Source
- DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH AT RIVERSIDE, CAL.”, The Christian Science Journal, May 1901, available at http://journal.christianscience.com/issues/1901/5/19-2/dedication-of-the-church-at-riverside-cal on 27 June 2015
