Article November 6, 1926 Issue

Church Unity

Jeannette A. eppich

Perhaps nothing could express Mrs. Eddy's religious leadership more surely than the Manual of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. Springing from "the logic of events," as she so aptly characterized it (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148), the By-laws of the Manual cover all the needs of church government, as exemplified in the simple, unreversible system known as The Mother Church and its branches all over the world.

Like the Lord's Prayer, the Manual requires spiritual interpretation; and just as Mrs. Eddy saw that the Lord's Prayer, spiritually interpreted, "covers all human needs," as she tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 16), so was she inspired in the revelation of the Manual to provide the means whereby Christian fellowship may be worked out harmoniously. Some may ask how the Lord's Prayer can cover all human needs, when it does not enumerate them all specifically; and so may the question arise as to the application of the Manual, when it does not enumerate all the difficulties that might appear in church fellowship. Covering as it does, however, the fundamentals involved in individual and cooperative church work, it maintains a universal coordination of activities without any entangling alliances.

Like the Constitution of the United States the Manual stands for individual rights, allowing no divergence from strict obedience; thus binding all branches in continual endeavor for the welfare of the whole, and making loving and loyal attainment possible. Jesus said, "By their fruits ye shall know them;" and have we any better way of discernment of progress than by the results obtained? Studying these results might lead to a sense of self-aggrandizement or of self-condemnation, unless all power were given to the law of eternal right, which the Manual presents. Thus, the study of results should give wings to wisdom, as the spiritual economy of endeavor in Christian Science is manifested, and the ability to grow, by reason of this perception, is acquired.

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