Science and Health
and the
Church Manual

Jesus: Pentecost: Mary Baker Eddy: Today

W. Gordon Brown

PART II CHURCH MANUAL

THE SIXTEEN SETS OF BY-LAWS

We come therefore to the Manual's principal department, the By-Laws themselves, conforming, as they do, to the familiar sixteenfold pattern of the foursquare mother city as surely as do the first sixteen chapters of the textbook, and the sixteen sections of text that make up the chapter "The Apocalypse."

Remember that what we are engaged with in this particular study is the translation of organized church (achieved through obedience to the Church Manual) into the eternal reality of church itself—that is, into the triumphant ''structure of Truth and Love'' (taught and understood through consecrated devotion to the textbook, Science and Health).

1. Church Officers

The first of the sixteen groups of By-laws concerns the seven Church Officers themselves, and it is evident from a glance at the relevant text that, second only to the office of Pastor Emeritus, the Readers of the Word of Science and Health and the Bible take pride of place among them.

Why is this so? Because these two books constitute the church's single impersonal Pastor, or Preacher, and together voice the actual Principle by which the church is governed. What the full quota of the seven Officers represents therefore is the all-controlling Principle, or Word, imparted by these two textbooks.

Correlatively, in the chapter "Prayer," the body (man) is in communion with, and is listening to, this self-same Principle; while in the opening section of "The Apocalypse" the little book (Science and Health, the Bible's spiritual and original meaning) elucidates this Principle's system of ideas, which man is bidden to eat up and assimilate.

We must be clear, however, that infinity has nothing to do with the number seven as such. Seven is the appropriate numerical symbol for conveying to humanity the idea of God's oneness, wholeness and perfection. The synonymity of the spiritual identities that make up the God-embodiment is infinite-fold, not sevenfold. It is the dragon with his "seven heads" (seven disparate capitals) that would break up the infinite One into a numerical, quantifiable seven.

The purpose of the seven in Christian Science is to teach mankind the Principle of an harmonious diversity of identity in unity, and unity in diversity. A diversity of members in unity necessarily characterizes the congregation of the Church of Christ, Scientist under Principle's official ruling.

2. Church Membership

The diversified yet unified body of the church is thus made up of its individual members. Hence the second group of Bylaws concerns qualification for membership, together with the way of applying for this, and of being subsequently admitted to the fold.

Ideally, membership of the Church of Christ, Scientist, is correlative with membership of the church in Philadelphia in Revelation 3—membership, that is, of the church of brotherly love. It implies membership of the body of generic man, the spiritual idea of God, and this means, in turn, belonging to a fraternity that is sinless and deathless because its origin is divine.

Bear in mind therefore that the Key to the Scriptures in Science and Health (called in Revelation the key of David, and bestowed only on the church in Philadelphia) is, in the Key's own words (S & H 534:7), the key to "the spiritual origin of man." Nothing less than mankind's origin in God ensures salvation from mortality for the members of the human race.

"Take, eat; this is my body"—"understand that you are members of one original Christ-body" —Jesus is recorded as saying to his disciples in the textbook's second chapter, "Atonement and Eucharist." What this implies is, understand your relationship to the woman crowned with the twelve stars in the second section of "The Apocalypse." In other words, Jesus says to them, "Be the body of generic man as the divine reality of the human race." In both instances the implication is that of church membership in its universal, nonsectarian meaning.

The Manual's second group of By-laws thus concerns the church-body itself, which its Officers in the first group (standing for the sevenfold ruling Principle) administer and govern. And how is this government exercised? Through what is detailed in the third group of By-laws, where the subject is church discipline.

3. Discipline

The third section of the By-laws is the longest one of all. Significantly, it includes not a single estoppel clause. And what this means surely is that the same code of discipline applies both to an organized membership, when Mary Baker Eddy is at the helm, and to the state of spiritually self- governed membership, which ensues when she is no longer personally present.

The purpose behind the disciplinary rules is to establish, on the part of the church membership, faithful discipleship to the continuity of Principle's government. Members must wed themselves to this Principle, and therefore to what each other is in the sight of Principle. or they will never bring to birth the church's and their own real spiritual identity, which is their diversity in collective unity.

There is correspondence therefore between this third set of By-laws and the textbook's third chapter "Marriage," and also with the third section of "The Apocalypse," where the woman, loyally wedded to this strict but loving Principle, is travailing in birth and pained to be delivered of her own true being as the Son of God.

Painful birth-throes result from resistance to divine discipline—resistance, that is, to surrendering personal relationships to the relationships that pertain in the divine Principle, Love; resistance also to giving up the sense of personal goodness for the morality that derives from the good which is God.

To discipline means not only to chasten, and possibly to punish, but also to train in self-control. The third chapter speaks of Socrates marriage to Xantippe, as being "a discipline for his philosophy." When therefore church members decline to submit to Love's corrective discipline they are liable to excommunication. But this really means that they have separated themselves from the wholeness harmony, and unity of the body. Hence it is under this third set of By-laws that we learn to be wedded to one whole body, and therefore wedded to one another.

4. Meetings

Once divine discipline has healed us of our personally disruptive egotism, we can, like the disciples on the day of Pentecost, meet together "with one accord in one place" and be receptive of the influx of the Christ-Spirit, or the Holy Ghost.

The fourth subject of the By-laws is thus mainly concerned with the church's Annual Meeting, or Assembly. This represents the church as a whole meeting in unity to listen to reports from the Treasurer, the Clerk, the different Committees, as well as to "general reports from the Field." Think of the happenings at Pentecost when the Word of God radiated out from the apostles in Jerusalem, and was fed back to them from the world at large, or "from the Field."

The role of the Clerk is paramount. What are named "special meetings" must always be called by the Clerk. Is it because the church's divine reality is "the structure of Truth and Love" that Clerk and Treasurer feature so prominently in this section of the By-laws dealing with church meetings?

When students meet together in a true sense of unity—when, like the disciples, they are with one accord in one place—they listen not to persons as such but to the outpourings of the Spirit of God. This is the exact opposite of listening spiritualistically to spirits seeming to sound through the mediumship of different personalities, such as is denounced in the textbook's fourth chapter, "Christian Science versus Spiritualism," and which is typified by the divisive, opinionated workings of the great red dragon in the fourth section of "The Apocalypse."

The battle cry of the dragon is always "divide and conquer." Hence what silences the dragon and demonstrates its impotence is union and communion with the divine source of our being —that is to say, our having "audience with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error" (S & H 15:12). As the "sum total of human error." the dragon is mediumship and priestcraft claiming to stand between man and God and between man and man, preventing their meeting and communing together in a state of harmony and meeting and reciprocity for the purpose of healing and serving mankind.

Published by
Gordon and Estelle Brown
England 1988
© Copyright W. Gordon Brown 1988
ISBN 0 904320 05 7
Printed by Villiers Publications Ltd 26a Shepherds Hill, London N6 5AH