Article January 29, 1927 Issue

Democracy

HAROLD FARMER HALL

What is the ideal government? What are the true relations between governor and governed? These are questions which will present themselves to every earnest student of Christian Science. Happily for us, our Leader has in the Manual of The Mother Church referred to the government of branch churches as democratic, and elsewhere states that the Magna Charta of Christian Science is essentially democratic. In view of this, it is of the utmost importance that we should endeavor to gain a clear understanding of what our Leader intended to convey by the term "democracy," if we are to be obedient to her instructions in our inward lives as well as in our outward activities.

The too generally accepted definition of democracy as a form of government in which a directorate has been deprived of its despotic control in order that this power may be placed in the hands of the people, may present but another form of autocracy; and as such it would offer no satisfactory solution. We are thus led to the conclusion that Mrs. Eddy's estimate of democracy was something far above ordinary concepts of it, and that it is necessary to look for a higher interpretation in order to glimpse something of our Leader's vision of government. It will be readily granted that in the teachings of Christian Science we have but one sense of true government presented, and that the right or divine sense. The statement on page 468 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation," includes all government, and therefore a proper sense of democracy. Here, then, is a fundamental statement; and in it we may find a satisfying answer to our questions.

Again, on page 393 of our textbook we find that "in Science man reflects God's government." From this it will be seen that man's part or activity in government is reflection, expression of divine Mind, which in reality governs all. It is interesting to note, as we turn to human experience, how even mortal mind reaches out, in this as in other directions, to simulate the divine. Taking for an example the ordinary material organizations and institutions, we find that with belief in minds many, innumerable directorates appear, endeavoring to express their ideals in and through their employees. Were it possible to find a human institution where the thoughts and wishes of a directorate were perfect, and were perfectly expressed in the activities of its employees, then we should indeed have reached the perfection of human government. Such a desideratum can be attained only as the human yields to the divine. It is only as the directorate is the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, and man is acknowledged as the likeness of Spirit, that perfectly harmonious government can be obtained.

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