sacrificing sort which assuaged him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled his
surpassed comprehension to make a sprint and catch up. These are to be
found in Art. XII., entitled.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY
This Article puts the whole publishing business into the hands of a
publishing Board–special. Mrs. Eddy appoints to its vacancies.
The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of the Mother-Church. Mrs.
Eddy owns the Treasurer.
Editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal cannot be elected
or removed without Mrs. Eddy’s knowledge and consent.
Every candidate for employment in a high capacity or a low one, on the
other periodicals or in the publishing house, must first be “accepted by
Mrs. Eddy as suitable.” And “by the Board of Directors”–which is
surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy owns the Board.
If at any time a weekly shall be started, “it shall be owned by The First
Church of Christ, Scientist”–which is Mrs. Eddy.
CHAPTER VIII
I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have
placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy’s heart is
a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still
remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish
to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards
satisfying minor and meaner ambitions.
I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear
that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all
distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian
Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them
to the purpose just suggested–the upbuilding of her personal glory–
hers, and no one else’s; that, and the continuing of her name’s glory
after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power,
howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of
it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts
forward the Mother-Church–a lay figure–and hides behind it. Whereas,
she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an
impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on–geldings, every one, shadows,
spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can
abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is
herself the Mother-Church. Now there is one By-law which says that the
Mother-Church:
“shall be officially controlled by no other church.”
That does not surprise us–we know by the rest of the By-laws that that
is a quite irrelevant remark. Yet we do vaguely and hazily wonder why
she takes the trouble to say it; why she wastes the words; what her
object can be–seeing that that emergency has been in so many, many ways,
and so effectively and drastically barred off and made impossible. Then
presently the object begins to dawn upon us. That is, it does after we
have read the rest of the By-law three or four times, wondering and
admiring to see Mrs. Eddy–Mrs. Eddy–Mrs. Eddy, of all persons–throwing
away power!– making a fair exchange–doing a fair thing for once more,
an almost generous thing! Then we look it through yet once more
unsatisfied, a little suspicious–and find that it is nothing but a sly,
thin make-believe, and that even the very title of it is a sarcasm and
embodies a falsehood–“self” government:
“Local Self-Government. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, Massachusetts, shall assume no official control of other churches
of this denomination. It shall be officially controlled by no other
church.”
It has a most pious and deceptive give-and-take air of perfect fairness,
unselfishness, magnanimity–almost godliness, indeed. But it is all art.
In the By-laws, Mrs. Eddy, speaking by the mouth of her other self, the
Mother-Church, proclaims that she will assume no official control of
other churches-branch churches. We examine the other By-laws, and they
answer some important questions for us: