Article July 1, 1944 Issue

Our Concept of The Mother Church

ROBERT J. HIGHLAND

In every authorized Christian Science branch church or society an announcement similar to the following is read at each service: "This church is a branch of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts." The writer was a member of The Mother Church and of a branch church for some years before he recognized the essential unity which is expressed in that statement.

During the study of a Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly containing citations from the fifteenth chapter of John's Gospel, the significance of Jesus' metaphor of "the true vine" in its application to The Mother Church, the branch churches, and their members was unfolded. Jesus says: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."

In referring to himself as the "vine" Jesus surely meant the Christ, Truth, which he manifested. But it is also possible to think of the "vine" as meaning Church, which Mary Baker Eddy thus defines in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583): "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle."

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