Science and Health
and the
Church Manual

Jesus: Pentecost: Mary Baker Eddy: Today

W. Gordon Brown

PART I SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Freedom from Outside Indoctrination

In 1892, when Mary Baker Eddy resurrected the church organization which she had dissolved three years earlier, she wrote of how she had rescued her church "from the grasp of legal power" and that now it must be put back into the arms of Love, if we would not be found fighting against God" (Mis140:22).

Yet, within a few days of her passing in 1910, her church officers, not comprehending their Leader's God-inspired provisions for their church's future, took the church from the arms of Love (or so it appears today to awakened spiritual sense) and returned it to the grasp of outgrown legal power. That is to say, they took divine law, as laid down in the Mother Church Manual, to civil law to be interpreted humanly and legalistically.

Today, in consequence, as the twentieth century nears its end (and therefore as the sixth millennium of the history of civilization nears its end) the Christian Science church finds itself in a state of increasing decline and disarray, virtually ignored by the rest of mankind.

More than seventy years have passed since the original misappropriation began, and in view of the coming seventh millennium of advancing human society (correlative with the seventh day of creation - Genesis 2:1-3), circumstances are surely demanding a further period of resurrection and rebuilding, in accordance with the example set by Mary Baker Eddy in 1889, when she disbanded altogether her central organization and, in 1892, reinstated this in the form of what she called a "spiritually organized" church. As she herself wrote of that exemplary dissolution, the "measure was immediately followed by a great revival of mutual love, prosperity, and spiritual power" (Ret 44:27).

Were the divine Principle, Love, similarly listened to and obeyed today, a corresponding revival of love, prosperity, and spiritual power would surely gladden the present disquieting and unhappy scene, both as regards the Christian Science church, and the world. Mrs Eddy is said to have told her followers that if they did not handle mesmerism (the mesmerism that would make them fight against God) the Cause of Christian Science would inevitably perish from the earth (see Coll 251).

A parallel state of affairs is recounted in the Bible in the story of the Babylonian captivity of the children of Israel. In Revelation 17 "Babylon" is defined as "mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." Isaiah and Jeremiah had foretold how Israel, on account of her persistent harlotry (her infidelity to her betrothal to Jehovah) would be taken into Babylonian captivity for a period of seventy years, after which time she would be liberated by Cyrus king of Persia and bidden to return to Jerusalem and rebuild (resurrect) the temple and city which Babylon had laid waste.
The reason metaphysically that she could do this was that during her period of punitive exile, her prophets, priests, and scribes (notably the prophet Ezekiel) were led to compile the last of the four great Scriptural documents which, according to modern scholarship, weave the text of the whole of the Old Testament.

This final consummate document, known as the "Priestly Document," was based on the ordered revelation of the seven days of creation from which the entire Bible was subsequently seen to stem. On account of the order, precision, and spiritual simplicity that characterized it, this fourth document was deemed more scientific than either the Jehovistic, Elohistic, or Deuteronomic documents that had previously been drawn up.

This latest version of holy writ, rooted in the timeless "days of creation, "is thought to have been part of the "book of the law" which Ezra took to Jerusalem when he went to encourage the liberated Israelites in the work of rebuilding the city. We read (Neh 8:8-18) how "day by day, from the first day unto the last day, he read in the book of the law of God. And they kept the feast seven days." Also we are told how Ezra caused them to understand, and not merely believe, what it was that he read to them. The need in the rebuilding (resurrecting) of identity, or body (the symbol of which in the Bible is temple, church, or city), is for wholeness of scientific understanding to replace mere fragmentary religious belief.

When, in 1889, Mary Baker Eddy dissolved her two central organizations of College and Church she defeated, in Christian Science, the corresponding purpose of Assyria and Babylon, in the Old Testament, to take into captivity the two Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Unlike what happened to the two kingdoms, the wisdom and foresight of Mary Baker Eddy was such that the carnal mind was left with nothing to attack or destroy. And this became the example of what eventually her followers would be required to do in respect of her second church organization which she started in 1892. Under the By-laws of their Church Manual they would be morally bound to implement this second dissolution in 1910 when Mrs Eddy herself was no longer at the helm. Or rather they would be compelled to let the church be self dissolving in accordance with its own code of laws.

And what would determine this dissolution was that by the end of her career, their Leader had led them to the point of individual self-government under God alone, whereby there was no further need for outside control. Yet they failed to understand her inspired provisions, and therefore they did not obey. Obedience to the By-laws of the Manual (the equivalent of Israel's "book of the law") would have ensured the church's natural dissolution as a controlling outside mother, and its becoming instead a model of spiritual and scientific self-government for the rest of mankind to take note of and follow.

But the purpose of Principle Cannot be thwarted, and therefore during the period from 1910 owards (reminiscent of Israel's Babylonian exile) another momentous happening took place which again was commensurate with the Old Testament scene. Like the revelation that came to Ezekiel in Babylon in the form of the Priestly document (the document that was essentially scientific in tone) there appeared, in the realm of advancing Christian Science, the realization of what it is that constitutes Christian Science the comprehensible Science of God, man, and the universe. And this, too, was rooted in that same scale of absolute spiritual values known as the seven days of creation.

This pre-eminently scientific revelation has already raised the deep things of the Bible and Science and Health above the mere fragmentary approaches of sectarian religion, and has also brought to light a truer and more profound understanding of the Church Manual as the equivalent of Israel's "book of the law."

It remains for this advancing revelation to bring to pass, in God's own way, the resurrection of the Christian Science church from the death dealing strangle hold of ecclesiastical. legalism, and thereby ensure fulfilment of the Founder provisions for the future of Christian Science. As Jesus said of his own mission, I am not "come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matt 5:17).

To this end it surely behoves every Christian Scientist who is awake to the present dangers confronting the Boston church and the world to give renewed attention to the Manual itself, and to do this in conjunction with an ever-deepening penetration into the scientific profundities of Science and Health. Then will Christian Scientists halt the endeavours of atheistic evil to wipe Christian Science off the face of the earth, and, instead, will bring into human experience the reverse of this, namely, the everpresent power of eternal divine Science to prove the nothingness of evil - thenothingness, that is, of mass hypnotism, lust for personal prestige and power, and all the subtle ramifications of political and ecclesiastical despotism.

Atheism, or animal magnetism, purposing to hold Christian Scientists in a state of ignorance and apathy regarding evil's own machinations, is wholly of the nature of a deceptive, superficial mask. When, therefore, Christian Science tears away this mask - when it unmasks animal magnetism - what stands revealed is not the face of evil but the everywhere present face of God. The real selfhood of the human race -the real identity of the Church of Christ, Scientist - is the reflection on the surface of the divine self-consciousness of the deep underlying truths of the unity of God and man.

In the Scriptures and in Christian Science the true idea of church is identical with the true idea of body - that is, of the whole of humanity as the one Christ-body in contrast to mankind being held in subjection to the dictates of material organization, whether this is ecclesiastical, political, or physiological. Ye, the church, Paul said, "are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

The unreality of the mortal sense of body is destined to be replaced (translated) by the understanding of what body truly is at the point of the individual consciousness of each and every member of the one God-embodiment. Then, and only then, will the problem of evil - the problem of ecclesiastical and political mass mesmerism and indoctrination - be scientifically solved.

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

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