Article April 6, 1918 Issue

"The scientific majority"

THE HONORABLE MRS. ERIC CARR

At a time when, as never before in the history of mankind, all the vexed and venerable problems appertaining to the government of nations may be said to have been thrown into the melting pot, it is interesting to speculate upon the nature of the changes which may be expected to have been wrought by this drastic purging, and to attempt to focus the Phoenix form which may fly upward at last, released from the funeral pyre of much garbage and wreckage. The philosophic onlooker (if indeed such an individual exists in a world struggle where all are drawn to play some part) sees that in the great conflict between the forces of autocracy and democracy only one can survive, and as the true philosopher labors for freedom of thought, the unbiased thinker will decide that some form of democracy will be the future government of the renewed and progressive civilization for which those countries are fighting to whom the democratic ideal is a living inspiration.

This prophecy may appear obvious to-day when the dark forces of autocracy have been unmasked and their true colors revealed, but perhaps the countries that are now staking their all for the ideas of democratic freedom were not so ready for this task in the bygone years when an intrepid New England woman organized "The Church of Christ, Scientist," on lines which she herself has told us are "essentially democratic" (Miscellany, p. 254). As time goes on it becomes increasingly evident that in choosing and utilizing what she considered the best form of human government for her church, Mrs. Eddy was simply applying the healing power of the Christ-idea to the diseased and afflicted counterfeits of government from which the nations had suffered so long; and this she sought to do, as in healing the sick, by presenting the true idea in some form that the world could understand and grasp.

This did not mean in the least that Mrs. Eddy sacrificed the ideal and spiritual standpoint to the necessary human footsteps in the right direction, as anyone can see by studying the Manual of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. "Be it remembered," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 91 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "that all types employed in the service of Christian Science should represent the most spiritual forms of thought and worship that can be made visible," and here we have the reason why the Christian Science organization and the Manual form the most supremely valuable model of a type of government that the world has ever seen; and here also is why the power of the idea they embody can be traced by any student of the world's drama now being enacted, as it makes its way into every country and leaves thereon a purifying mark.

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