SOURCE: "Christian Science," in Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Vergillius Ferm, The Philosophical Library, 1948, pp. 357-78.

[In the following essay, Todd provides an overview of Christian Science and of the principal tenets of Eddy's writings.]

Christian Science is the system of religious thought and the denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 as the outcome of her discovery of this religious truth at Swampscott, Massachusetts, in 1866, and her publication of the first edition of its basic textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in 1875. From childhood Mrs. Eddy had been deeply religious and a profound student of the Bible, and had long been inclined to attribute all causation to God, and to regard Him as infinitely good, and the Soul and source of all reality. But in 1866 a lifetime of ill-health was climaxed by what was regarded as a fatal injury from which she recovered almost instantaneously after reading an account of healing in Matthew's Gospel. That seeming miracle set her mind to work. It appeared to her as a divine revelation, the prophecy of a revolution in human thinking, and an inspired call to action. She describes (in her brief autobiography Retrospection and Introspection) how she withdrew from society for about three years "to ponder [her] mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle,—Deity." In this process of seeking for a solution of the problem of Mind-healing she readily grasped (as recorded in her textbook) "the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith." But that was not enough. She insisted on knowing the process, the method, the rationale, the Science of such healing, and finally reached absolute conclusions. But again mere theory, however well-founded and consistent, did not satisfy her. Hence for several years she put her discovery and conclusions to practical test by healing many sorts of disease and human disorders, both organic and functional, and by teaching students to heal. This experience led her to write and publish her basic book. It had been her earnest expectation that her discovery would be welcomed as a fresh spiritual dynamic by all religious denominations of those who professed belief in the Bible and in the word and works of Jesus the Christ. But it soon became evident that her discovery was ahead of the general frontage of contemporary Christianity; therefore it appeared necessary to found a separate church to preserve the purity of the teachings and practice of Christian Science and to more effectively present it to the world. Accordingly in 1879 she and her small band of followers organized the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston for the avowed purpose, as expressed by her, "to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." Ten years later this Church was dissolved, and in 1892 the present Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, known as The Mother Church, was organized. At present there are approximately 3,000 authorized branches of this Church established throughout the world. It is contrary to the basic governing Manual of The Mother Church, written by Mrs. Eddy, to give out statistics of membership, but authoritative newspaper accounts of the dedication of the Extension of the Original Mother Church in 1906 expressed astonishment at a movement which in thirty years had grown from a "mere handful of members" to a body of adherents numbering probably a million. Mrs. Eddy in a Message to her Church in 1901 answering a critic of her work, challenged him to match a record which "could start thirty years ago without a Christian Scientist on earth, and in this interval number one million." It may be asserted with confidence that the number of adherents has rapidly increased in the forty-five years since that challenge was issued.

Such in brief is the outline of the first eighty years of Christian Science history. Against this background certain significant details may now be presented. First, how does the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science define it?

In her little volume Rudimental Divine Science, she defines Christian Science as "the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony." Any work of scholarship is primarily an extended definition of its primary concept or theme; hence it is not surprising to find on nearly every page of Mrs. Eddy's writings some new turn of thought, some phrase or term which adds a new flash of meaning to the expression Christian Science. Perhaps the most compact summary of her revelation opens the chapter on Science, Theology, and Medicine in her textbook: "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science." But elsewhere occur such revealing synonyms as Science of Mind, Mental Science, Science of Mind-healing, Science of mental healing, Divine Science, Science of Christianity, Science of God, Science of good, Science of Life, Science of being, Science of man and the universe, etc. The purpose of Christian Science is to correct wrong human thinking and to replace it with Godlike understanding. Indeed on the very first page of the Preface to Science and Health Mrs. Eddy sounds the trumpet call: "The time for thinkers has come." In so far as clarifying terms or phrases will wing their way to the target of human consciousness she utilizes them to the utmost.

Through Christian Science the redoubtable term "metaphysics" takes on new significance. In the correction of false human thinking Christian metaphysics is the essential tool. Mrs. Eddy posits mental causation as primary by saying, "Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical," and at once relates causation to divinity by declaring that "God is the Principle of divine metaphysics."

At this point it should be stressed that Christian Science is not, as many have supposed, just a recrudescence of deistic philosophy, nor primarily a method of healing. It is a philosophy of God, man, the inter-relationship of God to man, and man to man, and of the universe of which God is the sole creator and man His indispensable expression. It is a system of healing, but as its Discoverer clearly pointed out, "the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin,—to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world."

Hence Christian Science is a religion based upon a specific content of spiritual truth. It has a literature, an organization, a basic Manual and a varied pattern of activities. But have Christian Scientists any religious "creed"? Mrs. Eddy squarely anticipated this question and answered it in her text book: "They have not, if by that term is meant doctrinal beliefs. The following is a brief exposition of the important points, or religious tenets, of Christian Science:—

1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.
2. We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God's image and likeness.
3. We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.
4. We acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Wayshower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death.
5. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.
6. And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just and pure."

Christian Science is in the line of Christian tradition, indeed of Protestant tradition, but is not to be considered as merely another Protestant sect or denomination. Current practice in radio circles and elsewhere is to set up four major religious classifications in the United States, namely, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Christian Scientist. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science was brought up in the atmosphere of New England Protestantism, and was for nearly forty years a member of the Congregational church, taught in Sunday School, and participated actively in current theological discussions. Only when it became necessary to establish her own church did she sever the link to the church which had nourished her. But her own church in no wise disavowed historic Christianity. Mrs. Eddy never claimed to have invented any new doctrine, invoked any new powers, nor introduced any new healing methods. She did claim that Christian Science is the Comforter promised by the Master in John's Gospel. She did claim that her discovery is the answer to prophecy as recorded in both the Old and the New Testament. She did claim that her method of healing was that of Jesus and his students, disciples, apostles. Thus she traces Christian Science practice directly to Christ Jesus.

Christian Science is not new: it is as ancient as God-like thinking and spiritual perception. Why then did it need to be "discovered"? Mrs. Eddy replies: "Our Master healed the sick, practised Christian healing, and taught the generalities of its divine Principle to his students; but he left no definite rule for demonstrating this Principle of healing and preventing disease. This rule remained to be discovered in Christian Science."

Hence the ideal set forth by Mrs. Eddy is to make every Christian Scientist his own practitioner. Is not that the significance of her prophecy: "When the Science of being is universally understood, every man will be his own physician, and Truth will be the universal panacea"?

Let it be reiterated that Christian Science does not actually claim nor enjoy a monopoly on spiritual healing. Some two score religious denominations listed by the United States Census indicate that "divine healing" occupies some place more or less significant in their systems of belief. It remained, however, for Christian Science to bring out into the foreground what the other sectors of Christendom had allowed to lapse, become obsolescent, or be relegated to back stage as peculiar to some remote "apostolic age."

Enough has been said now to warrant turning to answer certain inevitable questions. For example, how can Christian Science reject the idea and the fact of evil, since it is so obvious, so universal, so persistent, so powerful? First, let it be clear that to deny the reality or power of evil is not to ignore it. Hundreds of references to evil in Mrs. Eddy's writings prove keen awareness of the problem. In both the teaching and practice of Christian Science students are warned to detect, recognize, uncover, handle and destroy the claim of any particular form of error or evil to existence, reality, or power to injure. This rejection of evil is fundamental to Science: to admit it would nullify spiritual healing from the outset.

It is obvious that, as Mrs. Eddy declares, the "foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God." That something is matter. Reject that belief, and error disappears with its suppositional origin, history, and effects. After such heroic surgery the world is welcome to whatever seems to remain of evil's claim to be. Thus Christian Science offers not merely an authoritative religion and a demonstrable system of healing, but also a sound and coherent philosophy of life. Indeed on this account many have accepted it who had no immediate need of its healing ministry.

But what of the demand of Christian Science to be rated as not only a Science but the Science? Certainly Christian Science claims not only to have searched for truth, but to have found Truth, to have reduced this basic knowledge of Truth to a system which is eminently communicable; to have brought to light general or fundamental laws, and to have made this organized system of knowledge available in work, life and the search for truth.

It declares that this Truth includes all known or knowable fact, phenomenon, or action. What other knowledge remains to be apprehended or organized? What becomes of physical science, so-called? How does Christian Science regard the apparent sweeping domination of contemporary thought by the physical sciences? To the extent that they base themselves upon a concept of elementary material substance or force, it rejects them as a valid statement of ultimate truth. In short, Science rejects matter as without existence, reality, actuality, substance, or power. As put in the Scientific Statement of Being, quoted from Science and Health, which climaxes every Christian Science Sunday church service, "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all."

In this rejection of matter as a reality and the basis for true knowledge, Mrs. Eddy anticipated by half a century such philosophers as Whitehead, who complain that for three hundred years human science has limited itself by its assumption of basic materiality. She puts the whole trouble in a nutshell: "Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters."

When Mrs. Eddy wrote, "We tread on forces … Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas … Material so-called gases and forces are counterfeits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind," such bold challenges shocked and even amused the academic world and scientific orthodoxy. But the past quarter century witnesses a steady albeit cautious approach of many of the world's leading physical scientists to a not dissimilar ideology.

For example, Sir James Jeans speaks of annihilating matter, and frankly confesses that "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine." Professor Eddington also speaks of matter as "an imaginary something," and concludes that "the physical world is entirely abstract and without 'actuality' apart from its linkage to consciousness." Dampier in the 3rd edition of his History of Science devotes a whole section to the "Evanescence of Matter," and likewise speaks of annihilating matter.

Christian Science does not, however, derive its validity from such corroborative testimony of physical scientists. It maintains hold on its status as Science by its utilization of accepted scientific methods and procedures, notably revelation (spiritual enlightenment); reason (gathering of factual data and utilization of inductive logic); demonstration (practical proofs).

Christian Science is an eminently practical way of life. Its Founder and Leader had an enormous fund of common sense and a lively wit along with the deepest grasp of spiritual truth since the days of Christ Jesus the Way-shower. Hence her constant urging to beware of running ahead of one's power to demonstrate one's spiritual attainments, and her insistent injunction not to ignore evil or erroneous material beliefs. For contrary to common apprehension, as we have already pointed out, Christian Science does not ignore what it regards as unreal. This religion teaches its adherents to forsake and overcome every form of error or evil on the basis of its unreality; that is, by demonstrating the true idea and fact of reality. This it teaches them to do by means of spiritual law and spiritual power. Thus the practice of Christian Science is not merely mental; it must be also spiritual. Indeed, it is truly mental only as it is absolutely spiritual.

Christian Scientists on this present plane of existence do not claim to have realized or manifested fully the spiritual perfection which the Bible teaches from the first chapter of Genesis, through the teachings of Jesus and the apostolic doctrine, to the final scene of St. John's apocalyptic revelation. Their more modest claim derives from their Leader's teaching that perfection must be won, and that "earth's preparatory school" becomes an instrument to this end. Human experience is the arena for the regeneration of the fleshly mind through Truth and for the substitution of better for poorer beliefs until absolute Truth is reached.

We have now set forth the justification of the term Christian Science as both Christian and scientific. Moreover it ascribes to itself nothing short of being the only true and valid science, Mind-science, the revelation of the infinite divinity in all His "nature, essence, and wholeness"; and it posits the unity, indeed the identity of Science and Christianity. Hence it cannot be classified as merely a Christian sect or another denomination, for it permeates and must eventually transform every other statement of the Christian message to mankind.

Such declarations will continue to provoke in the serious inquirer's mind a flock of questions, just as they did when the Discoverer of Christian Science first issued her challenge. Topping the list would probably stand this one: Do Christian Scientists believe in God? In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, Mrs. Eddy gave a full and direct answer: "We hear it said the Christian Scientists have no God because their God is not a person.… The loyal Christian Scientists absolutely adopt Webster's definition of God, 'A Supreme Being,' and the Standard dictionary's definition of God, 'The one Supreme Being, self-existent and eternal.'"

Is Christian Science, then, a rather thin modern broth of Deism? When Mrs. Eddy was asked directly, Do you believe in God?, she replied: "I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I have no faith in any other thing or being.… To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates."

The concordances to Mrs. Eddy's writings reveal how the allness of God permeates Christian Science, and how it derives not from Platonic, Hegelian, or any other philosophy, but directly from the Scriptures. And yet it does not indulge in mere Bible-worship. As noted in the Tenets already quoted, it accepts the "inspired Word of the Bible." Thus the Bible is a source, a guide, but not a fetish. God alone is to be adored, worshiped, and obeyed. Hundreds of references might be cited from the approximately 2,500 which appear in Science and Health and the 4,000 in Mrs. Eddy's other writings. Only the ill-informed person or the most bigoted critic could claim that Christian Science is "godless."

Next in order, Do Christian Scientists believe in man, and what do they believe about man? Mrs. Eddy considered the term Christian Science as related especially to this truth as "applied to humanity." Hence the need for a clear concept of man. This she supplies in a three-page definition in Science and Health, making clear the distinction between mortal, corporeal, physical human kind, and spiritual, real, immortal man, the son of God. It is just at this point that Science parts company with traditional theology and accepts the spiritual record of man's creation in God's image and likeness described in the first chapter of Genesis and in the first five verses of the second chapter. In other words, Science rejects in toto the dustman theory and all it implies as primitive allegory and folk-belief. Mrs. Eddy epitomizes the issue in two brief sentences: "Human philosophy [and she might have included traditional theology] has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike."

Human consciousness becomes the arena in which Science, the revelation of divinity, battles with, displaces, and finally extirpates the mesmeric belief of man as material, as separated from his Father-Mother, creator and sustainer, God. That battle is the practice of Christian Science.

It is impossible in Science to mix material medicine and spiritual healing. You cannot work from two opposite standpoints and succeed. Hence a patient may not at the same time invoke both material remedies and scientific prayer. This does not mean discourtesy nor antagonism toward medical doctors or surgeons. Indeed Mrs. Eddy frequently paid high tribute to the better representatives of the medical profession.

But how can a Christian Scientist speak of healing unless he believes in a human material body which seems to demand healing? Of course man has a body. But that body is not material or physical. Human body and human mind are merely two aspects, outer and inner, of the same appearance. Human belief constructs this human body, controls it, afflicts it, and finally destroys it. Never was that body material; it was always a mortally mental concept,—although appearing to the human senses as an aggregation of organic cells. Hence the possibility of utilizing spiritual power, right thinking, spiritual prayer, to heal what appears to the corporeal senses as a sick, diseased, broken body, but which must be conceived as a sick, disordered, lawless, and fearful human mind.

Christian Science teaches further that in the so-called "experience of death," there is no interruption of life, continuity, or activity, no cessation of being, no dissipation of being into some pool of Nirvana, no absorption of individual identity into Deity; therefore body continues. Mrs. Eddy unequivocally declares: "Mortals waken from the dream of death with bodies unseen by those who think that they bury the body."

Now let us turn to certain other theological concepts and indicate the teaching of Christian Science regarding them. First, do Scientists accept immortality? Indeed they must, for they utterly reject the idea of mortality as part of the whole texture of belief in matter. Life, continuous life, is the reality, death the illusion. Man is immortal, cannot help being so, since God is Life itself and man lives in God. He is immortal and harmonious now and does not have to achieve immortality by dying. This very inextinguishable continuity of being, infinite, uninterrupted, and eternal connotes pre-existence as well as "future life." Life is not chopped into little segments by some mythical Lachesis and Atropos, is not limited by any so-called "natural lease on life," nor contingent on a mortal physical body. But this teaching does not in any way involve the complicated oriental beliefs in transmigration or reincarnation.

So large a role does this idea of immortality play in Christian Science that at least four Lesson-Sermons out of the twenty-six in the semi-annual cycle constituting the basis of church services are devoted to aspects of this subject. And this immortality is not conceived as a gray static condition in limbo, but as a continuous growth which all must experience until conscious perfection is attained.

Since all sin or sickness derives from a belief of separation from God, salvation is conscious at-one-ment with Him. And this at-one-ment is achieved by divine aid and encouragement to human effort, not by a substitutionary sacrifice or vicarious atonement by Jesus on the Cross. Jesus' life, not the belief in his death, is the important fact in Science.

One of the commonest questions addressed to Christian Science betrays a hang-over from primitive oriental beliefs about cosmology and the future life, namely: Do you believe in heaven and hell? The answer is unreservedly, yes,—but without any reference to a geographical location or to material conditions. After declaring that all is Mind and that metaphysics reduces things to thoughts, heaven and hell must be conceived as mental states. Indeed Mrs. Eddy tells us plainly that "heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal." As for hell, she says, "The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right."

Sin which is violation of divine law, brings inevitable penalty. Mrs. Eddy assures us that the heavenly Father who is Love and Truth, is not at war with His own image and likeness, man. Therefore the atonement of the Christ achieves the reconciliation of man to God, not vice versa. In this process of self-discovery and attainment of unity with God, the sin of belief in separation from God, of idolatrous acceptance of other gods, notably matter, must in some way be purged out of human thinking. Hence there must be active cooperation on the individual's part; he cannot merely manifest sorrow for wrongdoing, but must become convinced that sin confers no real satisfaction, must reform, and make restitution. Following St. Paul's injunction Christian Science requires that "the old man with his deeds must be put off," if man would avoid penalty, achieve spiritual maturity, and win heaven.

In this process of attaining daily rapport with divinity and ultimate unity or salvation, prayer is a method recognized by most of the great religions. Curiously enough, however, some uninformed critics have charged that Christian Science dispenses with prayer. Indeed, besides being called an infidel, an atheist, a spiritualist, a medium, a drug-addict, the Discoverer of Christian Science was referred to by a clergyman as "the pantheistic and prayerless Mrs. Eddy of Boston!" She promptly but lovingly gave him her answer which may be found in her volume of Miscellaneous Writings: "Three times a day, I retire to seek the divine blessing on the sick and sorrowing, with my face toward the Jerusalem of Love and Truth, in silent prayer to the Father which 'seeth in secret,' and with childlike confidence that He will reward 'openly.' In the midst of depressing care and labor I turn constantly to divine Love for guidance, and find rest." It was no mere accident which led the author to place the chapter on prayer at the very beginning of Science and Health. Nor did mere casual concern dictate in that same chapter the characterization of the Lord's Prayer as the "prayer which covers all human needs," and follow it with the inspired recognition that "only as we rise above all material sensuousness and sin, can we reach the heavenborn aspiration and spiritual consciousness, which is indicated in the Lord's Prayer and which instantaneously heals the sick."

No prayerless religion would provide that every church service must include a period for silent prayer and the audible repetition of the Lord's Prayer. Note further that Mrs. Eddy directs in the Church Manual that members of her Church should "daily watch and pray to be delivered from all evil, from prophesying, judging, condemning, counseling, influencing or being influenced erroneously." Moreover, in that same Manual she enjoins that it shall be the duty of every member of this Church to pray each day the prayer which now has attained wide acceptance: "'Thy kingdom come;' let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin; and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!"

How does Christian Science view the traditional sacraments of the Christian church? It does not engage in controversy nor take sides with either those who accept the whole seven or only the two commonly adopted by Protestantism. But from the beginning Mrs. Eddy's followers retained the sacramental concept but without material expression. Thus baptism, for example, becomes not a single rite or ceremony but a continuing spiritual purifying process. Mrs. Eddy devotes to marriage a whole vigorous chapter in her textbook, which sets forth the highest ideals of chastity, purity, and stability in the marriage bond.

Communion, the Eucharist, plays an important role in Christian Science thinking and church services. Twice a year, Sacrament appears in the cycle of Lesson-Sermons. A modification of the regular order of services permits featuring a period of special communion through reading the Church Tenets and silent prayer.

Here and there we have made passing reference to such terms as spiritualism, pantheism, hypnotism, mesmerism, faith cure. Has Christian Science any kinship with them? Mrs. Eddy answered categorically in her textbook: "No analogy exists between the vague hypotheses of agnosticism, pantheism, theosophy, spiritualism, or millenarianism and the demonstrable truths of Christian Science." Chapter IV of Science and Health bears the title "Christian Science versus Spiritualism," and in it while displaying great courtesy and charity towards spiritualists, she leaves no doubt as to her own position. As to pantheism, Mrs. Eddy in two score passages refutes it as utterly inconsistent with Science. The reason is surely obvious, for pantheism accepts the reality of matter which Science utterly rejects.

As to hypnotism, mesmerism, or the older term animal magnetism, she devotes a brief but unequivocal chapter, "Animal Magnetism Unmasked," in her textbook. Neither in theory nor in practise can the slightest relationship be established between Christian Science and hypnotism, since Science depends upon and utilizes the divine Mind, whereas hypnotism or suggestion uses the human mind for its manipulative purposes.

How about faith cure? Since an individual seeking to be healed must start somewhere and with some inclination towards belief in the healing agency, that point of departure may be called faith. But this is faith in God, not in the healer. And many people have been healed who started with little or no faith at all. Note that faith is the first step, but even that faith in God is insufficient. Blind faith in God is limited and soon exhausted because it savors of emotionalism.

From the foregoing it must be clear that Christian Science is a universal gospel, designed to meet every human need and for the benefit of all mankind. It has already in less than eighty years spread to every part of the globe. It has permeated religious and philosophic thinking, medicine and literature, wherever such exist. Its terminology has been widely even if unconsciously accepted. State laws and courts of justice almost everywhere accept Christian Science as a recognized method of healing. In her book Pulpit and Press, Mrs. Eddy set down this prophecy: "If the lives of Christian Scientists attest their fidelity to Truth, I predict that in the twentieth century every Christian church in our land, and a few in far-off lands, will approximate the understanding of Christian Science sufficiently to heal the sick in his name."

The Christian Science denomination cooperates in many ways with other denominations including foreign war relief, disaster relief, and in weekday religious education (where that plan is in vogue). It is represented on the General Commission for Army and Navy Chaplains. Its members as individuals participate energetically in national and local movements for civic and moral welfare.

This admittedly cursory and inadequate doctrinal summary must suffice, although naturally a full understanding could be secured only by studying the basic source book, Science and Health. We must now turn to the organization or institutional aspects of Christian Science. In 1875 a few of Mrs. Eddy's students arranged with her for weekly Sabbath meetings to be conducted by her in Lynn, as their teacher or instructor, and the following year organized the Christian Scientist Association. This germinal organization continued until its dissolution in 1889, after which time it functioned merely as an alumni group of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College founded by Mrs. Eddy in 1881. Meanwhile in 1879, after a few months of preliminary discussion and counselling together, she and twenty-six of her followers organized the Church of Christ, Scientist. For a while the church did little beside hold Sunday services. Other agencies such as the pioneer Christian Scientist Association, carried on most of the distinctive activities later concentrated in the Church. The need for simplification, co-ordination, and for a focal point of administration and responsibility became increasingly clear during the ten years after the first church was formally launched. Mrs. Eddy's students had established centers of healing and teaching (sometimes called "Institutes") all over the United States; churches had been organized in several localities and even in Europe. Yet the major problem which confronted Mrs. Eddy was the need for an adequate agency to be the central administrative and executive body of the Christian Science movement. Characteristically enough, Mrs. Eddy then recommended that the Boston church organization be dissolved. This was done in December 1889. For three years the Church carried on its work in an informal way, its affairs being managed by a Board of Directors. During this time of somewhat informal conduct of church affairs the Directors were encouraged to greater assumption of responsibility. But by 1892 Mrs. Eddy had matured the plan which still remains the organizational pattern of this denomination. This plan culminated in the organization of the present Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 1892, the denomination has consisted of The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and branch churches or branch societies wherever adherents number enough to warrant founding local organizations.

Branch churches or societies are entirely self-governing, have their own corporate existence, their own by-laws; set up their own membership qualifications; elect their own officers and Readers. They must, however, conform to certain requirements laid down in the Church Manual. The Manual requires that branches must be "distinctly democratic" in government. The form and order of exercises for Sunday, Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Communion services, and for the Sunday Schools are prescribed in the Manual as uniform for all churches. Each branch church maintains or cooperates in maintaining a Reading Room, and calls upon the Board of Lectureship annually for one or more lectures: a branch society, being only an incipient church, may but need not do either.

The officers of The Mother Church consist of The Christian Science Board of Directors, a President, the First and Second Readers, a Clerk, and a Treasurer. The governing body of the denomination is the Board of Directors. While each branch church has its own self-government, its roster of officers patterns that of The Mother Church. The Directors of The Mother Church are self-perpetuating, elect the President, Clerk, Treasurer, Readers, Superintendent of Sunday School, editors of publications, Board of Lectureship, Committee on Publication, and other executives. In branch churches members elect Readers, also Directors, who may or may not name the other church administrative officers.

The income of The Mother Church derives from a per capita tax provided in the Church Manual, from bequests, donations by branch churches, contributions from the field for war relief, disaster relief, or other special needs, payment by guests of the benevolent institutions, and profits from church publications.

From what has been said, quite evidently Christian Science is a "laymen's movement," in the sense that it permits no professional clergy or priesthood. Each member is his own priest. Each is eligible for election to any and all church offices. Rotation in office assures democracy and participation by members in all church activities. No titles are permitted except those conferred under laws of state or nation.

What then are the specific "activities" of the Christian Science movement? First, as might be expected, church services,—public worship. In the beginning these services included preaching of the traditional type. Mrs. Eddy herself preached sermons for several years by invitation in churches of other denominations and in the meeting halls where Christian Science services were held. As she gradually withdrew from this phase of directing her movement, other preachers took over, some of them regularly ordained ministers formerly serving other denominations. The momentous year 1895 records two significant steps in preserving and consolidating the outward aspects of Christian Science, namely, dedication of the Original Mother Church Edifice, and ordination of the Bible and Science and Health as the only preachers henceforth for both Mother Church and all branches.

Accordingly, reading from the King James version of the Bible and from Science and Health became the new order in January, 1895, for The Mother Church; and in April of the same year the branch churches followed suit. The order of services thus instituted became fixed by appropriate rules in the Church Manual.

The Wednesday testimonial meetings offer opportunity not only to hear selections from the Bible and Science and Health, but also testimonies of healing through application of Christian Science.

Each church may, and most do, conduct a Sunday School to which pupils up to the age of twenty may be admitted. Adult classes are no longer permitted, since the church service offers the same Lesson-Sermon for daily study, which is the basis of teaching for all but the younger Sunday School pupils.

Each branch church is required to establish and maintain a Reading Room, either on its own premises or in other quarters. Here the public may read, consult, borrow, or purchase the Bible, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and other authorized literature published or sold by The Christian Science Publishing Society.

Since on the very first page of the Preface to Science and Health its author has challenged, "The time for thinkers has come," Christian Science is fundamentally committed to education. Not mere intellectual, nor cultural, nor vocational education, but education in its broadest, most regenerative sense. Mary Baker Eddy was not only well educated herself, but prized and fostered education. The nobility of her English and the originality of her style indicate an outstanding cultivated mind. But she warned against the limited knowledge gained through material senses alone, and foresaw precisely how such knowledge could be turned against its possessors and bring on disaster.

The wide circulation of the periodicals issued by The Christian Science Publishing Society offers a great variety of educational content. Of these periodicals public opinion would probably rate The Christian Science Monitor as the most unique educational contribution of its founder, Mrs. Eddy. For almost forty years this international daily newspaper has been setting a standard of decent journalism, authentic news, and truth in advertising; hence its wide use by classes in public schools, colleges and universities.

The Christian Science church as such maintains no denominational school or college, but several private schools and one college are operated by Christian Scientists. Christian Science Organizations may now be found in over seventy colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and England.

We have repeatedly emphasized that Christian Science is a religion, and not just a new-fangled form of medicine or faith healing. Yet healing is the irrefutable witness that Science does embody the word and works of Christ Jesus the Way-shower and is thus able to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." Hence every genuine Christian Scientist is expected to be a healer. But it was entirely natural that certain among mem should feel the special qualifications for and an urge to devote their time and energies to healing on a full-time basis. The Christian Science Journal at present lists over 10,000 such practitioners serving throughout the world. In most localities Christian Science practice is recognized by statute or court decision as a legal method of healing, and practitioners are permitted to charge for their services. Mrs. Eddy approved such charges.

Because of persistent misapprehension the question, What is Mrs. Eddy's relation to the Christian Science movement? must be squarely faced and answered. She is known as the Discoverer, Founder and Leader of Christian Science. She wrote its basic textbook, Science and Health, the Church Manual, and a half score of other volumes large and small. She established the first Church of Christ, Scientist, and was its first pastor. After the dissolution of this Church she organized the present church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, of which she became Pastor Emeritus. She also provided for the establishment of its branches. She founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College and taught classes in it for nearly ten years. She set the pattern for meta-physical healings as witnessed by many so-called miraculous cures, including cancer, insanity, deformity, tuberculosis, enteritis, "brain fever," deafness, dumbness, stomach ulcers, ankylosed joints; and was able to restore both children and adults who manifested the common evidences and appearance of death. Pressure of other leadership activities led her to publicly decline further patients after 1885, but her healing work continued on occasion directly, and also on ever increasing scale, indirectly through inspiration and continued teaching of her students. She set up all the various boards and activities of her church, including lecturers, Reading Rooms, benevolences, publications. She launched The Christian Science Journal (of which she served as first editor and publisher) and every successive periodical including The Christian Science Monitor, which was the crowning achievement of her eighty-eighth year.

Small wonder then that Christian Scientists revere and love Mrs. Eddy, consider her as divinely inspired and guided, and pay grateful tribute to her at Wednesday testimonial meetings and in the denominational periodicals. But do they identify her as Christian Science? Do they worship her? Do they consider her as another Christ? The answer is an emphatic NO! The growth of Christian Science since Mrs. Eddy's passing on in 1910, however shocking to the soothsayers who predicted its immediate collapse after removal of her personality, witnesses to her genius as an organizer and to the inherent truth of her message. Mrs. Eddy never exalted her own personality, nor exacted personal homage, following, or adulation. To the contrary she constantly urged that her students follow her, their Leader, "only so far as she follows Christ." She begged them not to lean too much on her, but trust God to direct their steps. Again and again she warned her followers to beware of personalizing Christian Science or of worshiping her own personality. It was partly to avoid just this tendency of human nature to lionize and exploit personality that she withdrew from Boston and removed to Concord, New Hampshire, seventy miles away: and this at the very time her college was enjoying its highest prosperity and her fame widespread.

She never manifested false modesty as to the value and God-inspired quality of Science and Health, but likewise never plumed her own vanity as its author. She never considered her textbook as a substitute for the Bible, but as a scientific explanation and key to it. Hence the "only preachers" at a Christian Science church service, as she directed, are the Bible and the textbook.

In view of these facts one can easily comprehend Mrs. Eddy's reaction to the question of whether she was Christ. In a letter to the New York Herald just after the original Mother Church Edifice was dedicated, she wrote: "A despatch is given me, calling for an interview to answer for myself, 'Am I the second Christ?' Even the question shocks me. What I am is for God to declare in His infinite mercy. As it is, I claim nothing more than what I am, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and the blessing it has been to mankind which eternity enfolds.… There was, is, and never can be but one God, one Christ, one Jesus of Nazareth.…"

So Mary Baker Eddy stands as the messenger to this age of the same truth glimpsed by the prophets, taught and exemplified in its acme by Christ Jesus, practised for three centuries by the early Christian Church, overlaid by materialism and ecclesiasticism and dormant for over a millennium, again discovered, organized, and put into such form as to be available for all mankind henceforward and forever. The Christian Science Board of Directors in a public statement concerning "Mrs. Eddy's Place" which appeared in the Christian Science Sentinel for June 5, 1943, states in part: "she (Mrs. Eddy) represents in this age the spiritual idea of God typified by the woman in the Apocalypse." Concerning this "spiritual idea" Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "The impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our Master; but 'of his kingdom there shall be no end,' for Christ, God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and peoples—imperatively, absolutely, finally—with divine Science."

What now may be said as to the fruitage of Mrs. Eddy's leadership, the organization she founded, the church activities, the practitioners' services, and the publications? The important consideration is not the number of church members, nor church edifices, nor money value of properties, but does Christian Science maintain the healing mission its Discoverer and Leader conceived? It does. The demand for its textbook increases steadily. Many hundreds of editions of it have been issued. Dr. Lyman Powell writing in 1930 declared that Science and Health had become, next to the Bible, the "best seller" among serious books. But its sales have leaped to new heights since that date. It has been translated into German and French, and other translations are under consideration. This textbook contains a hundred pages of "Fruitage,"—testimonials of persons healed of desperate organic as well as functional ailments, through study of the book. The last chapter of Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings consists of seventy pages of similar testimonials. Every issue of The Christian Science Journal (monthly now in its 64th volume) contains several pages of authenticated testimonials of healing. An almost equal number appear in the weekly Christian Science Sentinel. The various Heralds (monthly in German, French, Dutch, Scandinavian, and Spanish languages) likewise include such testimonies. One may hear oral testimonies at any Wednesday church meeting or at Thanksgiving services. Practitioners offer healing help in every state in the Union, in Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Canada, Egypt, South Africa, India, Java, Australia, New Zealand, most European countries, Argentina, Brazil, and before the recent World War, in China and Japan. Christian Science nurses are available, though in much fewer numbers, in nearly two-thirds of the United States and in Australia, Great Britain and Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, and British Columbia. The current issues of the Journal and Sentinel record healings of such physical and mental troubles as sprained ankle, ivy poisoning, pernicious anemia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, nervous breakdown, broken bones (including hips and pelvis), measles, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, ringworm, goiter, appendicitis, chronic indigestion, grief, smoking, drinking. An analytical listing of disorders healed as published in these two periodicals for the five years 1940-45 brings together not less than 250 physical ailments both organic and functional, such as acne, Addison's disease, adenoids, angina pectoris, apoplexy, arthritis, astigmatism, blindness, Bright's disease, cancer, chorea, colitis, deafness, dementia praecox, diabetes, dysentery, encephalitis, epilepsy, gangrene, hay fever, hernia, jaundice, locomotor ataxia, malaria, neuritis, osteomelitis, paralysis, pneumonia, pyorrhea, shingles, sciatica, smallpox, St. Vitus' dance and stuttering. Note that this list includes the most inveterate and dreaded organic diseases as well as functional disorders.

Hence it is no exaggeration to assert that countless thousands in this world today are "living witnesses" and monuments to the power of Christian Science to meet every human need, to heal every type of sickness and disease, and to rescue untold numbers from a premature grave to which earnest but baffled doctors and their own fears had consigned them.

The whole field of medicine and surgery has felt the impact of Christian Science. The "mental factor in disease" receives more and more attention from medical schools and practitioners. Mental traumatism now occupies a fixed place in medical and surgical parlance. In polite circles discussion of one's diseases and ailments tends to become "bad form." Even language reflects Science terminology: for example, the now common usage of "passed on" for died.

Not unnaturally the dramatic emergence and spread of Christian Science as a major religious phenomenon of the last eighty years finds expression in a multifarious literature. Books, pamphlets, and periodical articles abound,—some ignorantly hostile, some malicious, some well intentioned but inaccurate. Hence it has become necessary to set up in library cataloguing two categories, "authorized" (i. e. Mrs. Eddy's own writings or publications of The Christian Science Publishing Society) and "unauthorized" (miscellaneous publications of varied derivation and content).