A C.S. Book—Publishing House.
For books approved by her. No others permitted.
Journals and Magazines. These are organs of
hers, and are controlled by her.
A College. For teaching C.S.
Supreme Church.
Pastor Emeritus—Mrs. Eddy.
Board of Directors.
Board of Education.
Board of Finance.
College Faculty.
Various Committees.
Treasurer.
Clerk.
First Members (of the Supreme Church).
Members of the Supreme Church.
It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.
Even the little “Pastor Emeritus” is a
fiction. Instead of being merely an honorary
and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official
in the entire body that has the slightest power.
In her Manual, she has provided a prodigality of
ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of any
functionary in the government whenever she wants to.
The officials are all shadows, save herself; she
is the only reality. She allows no one to hold
office more than a year—no one gets a chance
to become over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous.
“Excommunication” is the favorite penalty-it
is threatened at every turn. It is evidently
the pet dread and terror of the Church’s membership.
The member who thinks, without getting his thought
from Mrs. Eddy before uttering it, is banished permanently.
One or two kinds of sinners can plead their way back
into the fold, but this one, never. To think—in
the Supreme Church—is the New Unpardonable
Sin.
To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy
adds this rivet: “This By-law shall not
be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus.”
Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own
person, in the matter of powers and authorities.
Although she has provided so many ways of getting
rid of unsatisfactory members and officials, she was
still afraid she might have left a life-preserver
lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule
to cover that defect. By applying it, she can
excommunicate (and this is perpetual again) every
functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and
every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that
Church, at an hour’s notice—and do
it all by herself without anybody’s help.
By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only
to say a person connected with that Church is secretly
practicing hypnotism or mesmerism; whereupon, immediate
excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion!
She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence—her
accusation is all that is necessary.
Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the
ballad says:
“Ask of the winds
that far away
With fragments strewed
the sea!”
The Branch Church’s pulpit is occupied by two
“Readers.” Without them the Branch
Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut.
To have control, then, of the Readers, is to have
control of the Branch Churches. Mrs. Eddy has
that control—a control wholly without limit,
a control shared with no one.
