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Volume 1, Number 1
THE CHURCH OF
CHRIST JESUS AND MARY BAKER EDDY While adhering to the Tenets of Christian Science found in Science and Health, pages 496 and 497, to which each member subscribes, the purposes for this change are rooted in Scriptural prophecy and fulfillment, as follows:— FOUR INSTRUMENTS
OF SALVATION The First
Instrument:— This mighty book is the one which appeared to Ezekiel (2:8-10; 3:1-4) and later to Daniel who was charged with sealing it and in which state it was to remain "to the time of the end." (Daniel 12:1, 4, 9) Thus, six chapters in the book of Revelation are given to the specific details involved in opening the seven seals thus placed upon it by Daniel. The opening of the seals of this book fulfills the prophecy of the Second Coming of Christ in the "latter days" or "the time of the end." It is this book that is essential to our being "made ... unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth." (Rev. 5:10; 1:6) The Second
Instrument:— The Two
Witnesses In Mrs. Eddy's relation to Christ Jesus we hold the profound spiritual meaning of her words in Science and Health 576:26, and in Christ and Christmas, pages 39, 41, 43 and 45, to characterize this "Christian Unity." "A Place in the
Trinity" We hold that Mrs. Eddy occupies such a place. The Third
Instrument:— All Nations to
Come Under the Rulership of Christ It is to be through Israel that the nations of the earth are to be united under the rulership of Christ. The Lost Tribes
of Israel The Anglo-Israel cause won Mrs. Eddy's conviction. Briefly stated: Ten-tribed Israel left Palestine while two-tribed Judah remained. The movements of the Israel clans are traced out of the East, across Europe to their new settlement in the Isles of Britain, and then on to America. The prophets foretold Israel's westward trek and the monuments and traditions record the divinely guided wanderings of the people who left "waymarks" behind them as they journeyed toward their ultimate destination. Today the peoples of Anglo-Israel alone bear all the marks by which the House of Israel was to be known in the latter days and they have unconsciously fulfilled in their history, and do fulfill in their present-day activities, what the Bible declares would be accomplished by them in these latter times. As the people of the northern ten-tribed Kingdom of Israel they bear a responsibility before God from which they cannot escape. Failure to awaken to the knowledge of their identity and assume their spiritual responsibility as the people with whom God made His unalterable covenants, will doubtless bring national suffering and trouble until this identification is achieved. In a letter in 1902 to the author of a work tracing the lineage of Queen Victoria back to King David, Mrs. Eddy wrote: "Your work, The Royal House of Britain an Enduring Dynasty, is indeed masterful: one of the most remarkable Biblical researches in that direction ever accomplished. Its data and the logic of its events sustain its authenticity, and its grandeur sparkles in the words, 'King Jesus.'" In the words of Jeremiah, quoted in the book: "David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the House of Israel." (Jer. 33:17) Mrs. Eddy states: "Christian Science ... restores the lost Israel." (Manual, page 17) And she writes: To Judah's sceptered race,— "Thou of the self-same spirit, Allied by nations' grace, "Wouldst cheer the
hosts of heaven; Brave Britain,
blest America! Uniting the "battle-plan" of Anglo-Israel will achieve the union of the nations "with [the] rod of iron." The Fourth
Instrument:— The "Boston
school"—Hanna and Knott In the words of Peel: "It was one more lesson she had learned from coming to grips with a concrete situation which threatened to divide the field" (p. 252). By this "lesson" is meant the conflict and strife generated by "two variant 'schools' of Christian Science teaching (sometimes known as the Boston school and the Chicago school) of which [Judge Septimus J.] Hanna and [Edward A.] Kimball were presumed to be the chief representatives" (p. 251). In 1889 Mrs. Eddy closed the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. Nine years later, in 1898, she established a Board of Education, under her auspices as President of the college. This Board was composed of Judge Septimus J. Hanna, C.S.D., Mrs. Laura Lathrop, C.S.D., and Mr. Edward A. Kimball, C.S.D., teacher of the Normal class. After the first Normal class in 1899 Mrs. Eddy wrote Judge Hanna that she had wanted him to be President of the Board of Education. In 1903 Mrs. Eddy called Mrs. Annie M. Knott, C.S.D., to Boston as an editor of the periodicals "to see that her teachings were strictly adhered to in the articles which went out." (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Third Series, p. 87) Mrs. Knott was of the "Boston school" as shown below. In 1958 Dr. Charles Braden published his book Christian Science Today (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press; 432 pages, hardback). In contrast to Robert Peel who had full access to the Archives of The Mother Church, Dr. Braden was not permitted any access to the material at the Boston Headquarters. Consequently, he turned elsewhere and found the most complete collection of Christian Science historic material in the libraries of adherents of the "Chicago school" of Christian Science, who were the leading exponents of this school and well known throughout the Field. In the view of those early students of the Kimball school Mrs. Annie M. Knott was known to be the chief representative of the "Boston school." And Dr. Braden speaks of "officialdom, in the person of Mrs. Knott" (p. 311), and identifies her thus. For two decades after the departure of Mrs. Eddy in 1910, the Boston Headquarters maintained the "Boston school" in their Normal College and editorial policy. At her passing Judge Hanna succeeded Mrs. Eddy as President of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College (different from the office of president of the Board of Education; cf. Manual. Art. XXVIII. Sect. 1) with life tenure at the appointment of Mrs. Eddy. In March, 1919, Mrs. Knott was chosen to be the first woman member of The Christian Science Board of Directors. In July, 1921, Judge Hanna passed on, and in 1934 Mrs. Knott retired from the Board of Directors in Boston. After her departure the Kimball variant became the more popular and was adopted by the Headquarters as the official teaching for the Normal College and the editorial policy of the periodicals. In a written statement which she gave Calvin Frye to preserve, Mrs. Eddy in her final years stated: "In answer to oncoming questions will say: I calculate that about one half century more will bring to the front the [entity] that God has equipped to lift aloft His standard of Christian Science." (First published by the Mother Church director to whom was given the paper by Mr. Frye,—in The Christian Science Watchman. January, 1928, Vol. IV, No. 5, pages 103-6; and three years later published in Since Mrs. Eddy by Altman K. Swihart. New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1931. page 305) The Furled
Standard It is obvious if a doctrinal "standard" needs to be lifted "aloft" after a half century it must necessarily be from a "down"—or furled—position. "Aloft" and "furled" clearly are variant positions—in the case of a doctrinal "standard" they represent "variant schools," or teachings. Mrs. Eddy, then, must have foreseen that after her departure a variant doctrine would become popular until such time as some process should operate to change that position. The Depository
as an Instrument of Salvation Signs of the
Times Church Activity
to Continue "The continuity of The Church of Christ, Scientist is assured. It is growing wonderfully. It will embrace all the churches, one by one, because in it alone is the simplicity of the oneness of God; the oneness of Christ and the perfecting of man stated scientifically." "How will it be governed after all now concerned in its government shall have passed on?" "It will evolve scientifically. ... Its government will develop as it progresses." "Will there be a hierarchy, or will it be directed by a single earthly ruler?" "In time its present rules of service and present rulership will advance nearer perfection [that is, without 'hierarchy']..." The CHURCH OF CHRIST JESUS AND MARY BAKER EDDY CHRISTIAN SCIENCE is "laying off organization" in consonance with Mrs. Eddy's published words. In a letter written "To the Christian Science Board of Education," November 2, 1898, Mrs. Eddy stated in part: "The Massachusetts Metaphysical College charter is in my possession, and simply calling a meeting, etc., would legalize your certificates so as to be issued with the degrees of my College. But this would revive and include organization, which God evidently purposes to destroy as fast as Christian Scientists and the world grow up to it, and can go on rightly without it." (Quoted by Judge Hanna) An Analogy She clearly states what steps will occur in this next stage (Retrospection and Introspection 91:13-27; 92:1-10): "... when it has done its work [organization—or the so-called first stage booster], the purely Christly method of teaching and preaching must be adopted." Teaching and preaching are to advance to a higher mode—"the purely Christly method." Just what is this "purely Christly method"? Our Leader answers this: "Where did Jesus deliver this great lesson—or, rather, this series of great lessons [the Sermon on the Mount]—on humanity and divinity? On a hillside, near the sloping shores of the Lake of Galileo, where he spake primarily to his immediate disciples. "In this simplicity, and with such fidelity, we see Jesus ministering to the spiritual needs of all who placed themselves under his care, always leading then into the divine order, under the sway of his own perfect understanding. His power over others was spiritual, not corporeal. To the students whom he had chosen, his immortal teaching was the bread of Life. When he was with them, a fishing-boat became a sanctuary, and the solitude was peopled with holy messages from the All-Father. The grove became his class-room, and nature's haunts were the Messiah's university. "... The method of his religion was not too simple to be sublime, nor was his power so exalted as to be unavailable for the needs of suffering mortals, whose wounds he healed by Truth and Love. His order of ministration was 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.' May we unloose the latchets of his Christliness, inherit his legacy of love, and reach the fruition of his promise: 'It ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'" She states: "The student who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate under divine honors, which are the only appropriate seals for Christian Science. State honors [diplomas] perish, and their gain is loss to the Christian Scientist." (Miscellaneous Writings 358:4-8) These views on organization published by our Leader around the turn of the century were not new. She had always seen them in this light, and had even expressed them in her first edition of Science and Health, copyrighted in 1875, where she writes: "Christianity is not a creed, doctrine, or belief; but the demonstration of Life, Love, and Truth; ... We have no need of creeds and church organizations to sustain or explain a demonstrable platform that defines itself in healing the sick and casting out error. ... The mistake the disciples of Jesus made to found religious organizations and church rites, if indeed they did this, was one the Master did not make; ... No time was lost by our Master in organizations, rites, and ceremonies, or in proselyting for certain forms of belief;..." (Science and Health, First Edition, pages 165-166) She further writes: "We have no record that forms of church worship were instituted by our great spiritual teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and we learn the improbability of this, in the Science of God, that he taught and demonstrated. ... A magnificent edifice is not the sign of Christ's Church. Anciently the followers of Christ, Truth, measured their Christianity by the control it gave them over sickness, sin and death; whereas the more modern forms of religion leave out the latter; but we are learning slowly, as the centuries pass, to leave forms and doctrines, and require the primitive tests of Christianity." (Ibid, p. 167) Often one hears Christian Scientists express the thought that "error" or "evil" is causing the churches to diminish and experience fading light, but Mrs. Eddy makes It clear that it is God's purpose to lay off organization (hierarchy) at the right time, and to unfurl and "lift aloft His standard of Christian Science." When this is not done spiritual growth is retarded. Implementation
of Next Stage UNFURLING AND
LIFTING ALOFT While Mrs. Eddy was personally present, she directed the selection of the members of the Lesson-Sermon committee. These sermons were a means she considered of great importance in developing and reinforcing her class teaching of Christian Science. THE FOUR SIDES
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