There isn’t any—now. But with
power and money piling up higher and higher every
day and the Church’s dominion spreading daily
wider and farther, a time could come when the envious
and ambitious could start the idea that it would be
wise and well to put a watch upon these assets —a
watch equipped with properly large authority.
By custom, a Board of Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has
foreseen that probability—for she is a woman
with a long, long look ahead, the longest look ahead
that ever a woman had—and she has provided
for that emergency. In Art. I., Sec. 5,
she has decreed that no Board of Trustees shall ever
exist in the Mother-Church “except it be constituted
by the Pastor Emeritus.”
The magnificence of it, the daring of it! Thus
far, she is:
The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;
Pastor Emeritus;
President;
Board of Directors;
Treasurer;
Clerk;
and future Board of Trustees;
and is still moving onward, ever onward. When
I contemplate her from a commercial point of view,
there are no words that can convey my admiration of
her.
These are a feature of first importance in the church-machinery
of Christian Science. For they occupy the pulpit.
They hold the place that the preacher holds in the
other Christian Churches. They hold that place,
but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty
at a time—a man and a woman. One
reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads the
explanation of it from Science and Health—and
so they go on alternating. This constitutes the
service—this, with choir-music. They
utter no word of their own. Art. IV., Sec.
6, closes their mouths with this uncompromising gag:
“They shall make no remarks explanatory of the
Lesson-Sermon at any time during the service.”
It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled
by it at a first reading of it; nor at the second,
nor the third. One may have to read it a dozen
times before the whole magnitude of it rises before
the mind. It far and away oversizes and outclasses
the best business-idea yet invented for the safe-guarding
and perpetuating of a religion. If it had been
thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and seventy
years ago, there would be but one Christian sect in
the world now, instead of ten dozens of them.
There are many varieties of men in the world, consequently
there are many varieties of minds in its pulpits.
This insures many differing interpretations of important
Scripture texts, and this in turn insures the splitting
up of a religion into many sects. It is what
has happened; it was sure to happen.
Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of preaching,
and has put up the bars. She will have no preaching
in her Church. She has explained all essential
Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book.
In her belief her underlings cannot improve upon
those explanations, and in that stern sentence “they
shall make no explanatory remarks” she has barred
them for all time from trying. She will be obeyed;
there is no question about that.
