Article December 9, 1916 Issue

The Church of Christ, Scientist

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Christian Scientists are sometimes confronted with the suggestion that material organization is inconsistent with the ideal of spiritual freedom inculcated by Jesus the Christ. In support of this contention it is pointed out that our Lord neither established nor, so far as appears, made provision for any outward form of worship or organized means of carrying on the work which he inaugurated. In order to see the issue in its true light we need to consider both the physical and the metaphysical aspects of this question. Any form of organization which is fitted to subserve the ends of spiritual growth must come naturally into existence to meet practical demands as they arise in experience.

In the order of divine Science it was the mission of the Messiah, as Jesus himself declared, to demonstrate the control of Spirit over material beliefs, even to the overcoming of death, but in carrying out this ideal his public ministry was cut short after a comparatively brief season. Forced to labor with unpromising material and under adverse circumstances, his work was mainly directed to awakening in a handful of chosen followers some faint sense of the great truths of spiritual being. The master Teacher evidently appreciated the futility of outlining steps in progress which were in advance of the disciples' attainments. He declared: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth."

Even had the founding of an organization at that time been feasible from any point of view, Jesus' followers, by no means weaned from ritualistic beliefs, were probably not equipped to cope scientifically with the problems which such a step would have precipitated. Then again, human concepts had not matured sufficiently to be subjected to the metaphysical harvesting process whereby the understanding of divine Science separates the wheat of spiritual sense from the tares of material sense. Hence the Master foresaw and foretold the necessity for a second coming to human consciousness of the Christ, when the spiritual leaven should have more fully prepared humanity to receive the impersonal idea of the Christ, Truth.

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