Article June 20, 1925 Issue

The members and officers of the church founded by Mary Baker Eddy,...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The Mother Church, Boston, Massachusetts,—Indianapolis, Indiana

Times

The members and officers of the church founded by Mary Baker Eddy, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and its branches, have no desire for controversy with anybody, and we especially prefer to avoid controversy with the persons who were members of this church, but who have formed a different organization. In no instance would there be any controversy between them and us if they would carry on their own work and refrain from misrepresentation and molestation. In spite of this attitude on our part, they have now twice made use of your columns for a purpose which we must regard as both aggressive and unjust.

There is positively no basis in fact for the claim made in your columns by the persons in question that they are acting in accordance with an intention expressed by Mrs. Eddy that her church should be dissolved when she passed on. She never said or wrote anything that could be reasonably construed as evincing such an intention. On the contrary, she founded her church as a permanent institution, gave it a constitution of this character (its Deed of Trust and Bylaws); and she made her last will to consist chiefly of clauses establishing permanent trusts to be administered by the Directors of her church. The By-law cited in your columns as evidence of Mrs. Eddy's alleged intention that her church should be dissolved when she passed on, reads as follows: "A member who is found violating any of the By-Laws or Rules herein set forth, shall be admonished in consonance with the Scriptural demand in Matthew, 18:15–17; and if he neglect to accept such admonition, he shall be placed on probation, or if he repeat the offense, his name shall be dropped from the roll of Church membership" (Church Manual, pp. 50, 51).

The former members of our church who have had the courtesy of your columns claim that the foregoing By-law requires the Directors of our church to expel all of its members and then expel themselves and thus destroy the church, because certain other By-laws, if construed literally, call for Mrs. Eddy's personal approval of certain administrative acts to be done by the Directors in the ordinary course of their work. I submit to the fair-minded readers of the Times that this claim is both inherently self-contradictory and contradictory of the By-law to which it refers.

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