On Voluntary Association

[rv.ros...@gmail.com]

From David James Nolan written in 2002 -

* * * *begin paste * * * *

There was a considerable degree of dissension amongst the
Boston students in regard to what, precisely, they wanted to
accomplish by building a church structure in Boston. At one
point, it seemed that there were as many concepts of what the
church was to contain, and what it was to accomplish, as there
were students to entertain such views. With Mrs. Eddy not
present in Boston to guide and undergird her, "nestling's
faltering flight[s]," a tremendous disunity began to settle in on the
small, but earnest group of students, that contributed
significantly to thwarting the church building project.

In "Hints for History" printed in the July JOURNAL, 1892, Mrs.
Eddy plainly declared her intention that the structure "be called
The Church of Christ, Scientist" (see: Mis. 139:18-22). At no
time did Mrs. Eddy contemplate or refer to the creation of a
church organization outside of divine control alone (except
temporarily, in 1892, under pressure from unenlightened
students). Her purpose was to assure that the land and the
structure built upon it would never come under the control of
persons at variance with the Christian Scientist's understanding
of God, as revealed in her textbook.

As such the church, or meeting house, could not belong to any
organized group with a government –– whether congregationally
elected or not –– that might have authority to sell it, lose it,
change its use, or try to update the worship sanctioned in
"Science and Health." Thus, the spiritual idea would live "though
the material superstructure should crumble into dust." (Mis.
140.28-32.) By September, 1895, Mrs. Eddy would have left her
example fully established for future generations to perceive in
God's good time.

Meanwhile the mechanism for erecting a church continued, and
those who had been giving to the church fund held varying views
of just what they were contributing to. Many regarded it as a
central organization in which they could "belong" and influence
decisions, and a few understood that membership signified
nothing other than acceptance of "Science and Health" as the
chart of life, and of its Author as God, the one Life and Love. The
publisher of the JOURNAL, who became a trustee of the building
fund, saw the site, however, as an opportunity for an imposing
headquarters where persons would coordinate and control all
the activities of Christian Scientists, including their publications.

The thought of the students in Boston was forging ahead in one
direction while Mrs. Eddy was actively engaged pursuing a
diametrically opposite objective. How well we remember Mrs.
Eddy's letter of November 23, 1889, to Rev. Mr. Norcross, Pastor,
Church of Christ (Scientist), where Mrs. Eddy disclosed:

"This morning has finished my halting between two opinions.
This Mother Church must disorganize, and now is the time to do
it, and form no new organization but the spiritual one. Follow
Christ Jesus' example and not that of his disciples, which has
come to naught in science. Ours should establish Science, but
not material organization. Will tell you all that leads to this
decision when I see you.

Lovingly,

M.B.G. Eddy

Clearly, Mrs. Eddy was being divinely guided under God's
direction. She had been responding to the "apprehension of
what has been, and must be, the final outcome of material
organization, which wars with Love's compact" [See: Ret. 47:1-3].
However, as has been pointed out by many of Mrs. Eddy's
biographers, her good students were those who were used to,
and wanted, church homes! They saw their Leader in the
environment of a church, and needed God's guidance to release
Mrs. Eddy, and work out of such delusion.

Mrs. Eddy was paving the way for a church edifice to be a symbol
of God's universal church, but not as a prototype of Christian
Science organizations –– a move which would be "disastrous"
[See: Man. 71. Art xxiii, Sect. 3]. Her example for the already
existing organizations that were in full operation –– in line with
her own personal withdrawal –– was also beginning. This
would show that such existing groups of students, as seemed
necessary, would be known as "voluntary associations of
Christians."

All along, in the crisis of mortal mind, Mrs. Eddy saw "Science
and Health," not Christian Science churches, as the Redeemer.
To David Easton, who later became the pastor of the Boston
church, she wrote:

"If you will make a study of "Science and Health" for one month
and go through the book as you would any textbook in college, it
will be of great advantage to you." To another she wrote, "God
wrote the textbook. Study it; let God speak to you!" And, to Mrs.
Annie Knott, C.S.D., the founder of the Detroit Christian Science
Institute, she wrote the time would come when medical thought
might become so organized that it would attempt to make the
practice of Christian Science impossible, and the remedy of this
was not a counter proliferation of Christian Science churches,
but:

"When [that] time come I want my students to take every means
possible to make Science and Health available to the whole
world."

Later, in 1899, when students started church services in
Concord, New Hampshire, where Mrs. Eddy resided, she wrote
to one of the prominent Concord Scientists in part as follows:

"I did not want a church so near me in Concord. I have all I
should do for mine in Boston. Now I see the care is increased
that I need diminished, and if there were no Sunday service and
only healers here I sincerely believe it would be better for me and
the world. God governs me. When I sent for Mr. Ezra Bushwell I
told him I did not want the church or Sunday services which lead
to it, but healing work where I was. This was God's first order
and in 33 years [that is, since 1866] I have not yielded to depart
from His first order without being driven back to take it up."

When newcomers arrived in Concord to serve in Mrs. Eddy's
household, she would extend to them the opportunity to go to
church on their first Sunday of residence, but was disappointed if
they took the offer. Following, are three of her statements
recorded by her household resident students that show the
unlocated, instant concept of church which Mrs. Eddy had
attained and was demanding of her students:

1. The thought of advanced students should be turned away
from too much church attendance. It is not to limit but to broaden
their viewpoint –– to free their thought from a sense that God is
to be found only in church services. To be sure, attending church
is a step in the student's progress, but if his concept of church
stagnates at that point and his demonstration of church does not
gradually broaden to cover everything, then spiritual growth
ceases, even with the most punctilious church attendance.

2. You don't thing you go to church to worship God, do you, as
we used to think and do? Our God isn't to be worshiped, but
expressed.

3. When Christian Scientists learn to live together, there will be
no need for churches.

In a letter, dated May 8, 1892, Mrs. Eddy wrote the following to Mr.
Wm. B. Johnson:

"My dear Student:

I hope a word to the wise will again be sufficient. Hence my
caution in this note. If you reorganize it will ruin the prosperity of
our church. Mr. Knapp owns the lot I gave, if the Trustees Deed
is not legal, and it is safe in his hands –– for he will give a legal
claim or title to it so that no disputes can occur. The Trustees
have no right to say they are legally in trust and yet the land is not
legally conveyed. If the Deed that gave them this trust is illegal
as to the land, it certainly is as to their office. The thing for them
to do is to get the money they have gotten, put into a building as
the contributors designed, if they would be thought honest.

I have given full permission, or my poor consent, for the church to
do anything she chooses. But I tell you the consequences of
reorganizing and you will find I am right. Open the eyes of the
church to these facts. I have consented to whatever the Church
pleases to do, for I am not her keeper, and if she again sells her
prosperity for a mess of pottage, it is not my fault.

With love,

Mary B. G. Eddy"

Two days later, on May 10, 1892, Mrs. Eddy wrote to all the
brethren of the Boston church:

"Dear Brethren:

I have said, you have my permission to reorganize, if you desire
to do this. But I also realize it is my duty to say that our Father's
hand was seen in your disorganizing, and I foresee that if you
reorganize you are liable to lose your present prosperity and your
from of church government, which so far has proved itself wise
and profitable, and my gift of land worth $20.000.

Yours in Christ,

Mary B. G. Eddy"

The following day, before retiring for the night, Mrs. Eddy wrote
the following note, dated May 11, 1892:

"I seem to hear so plainly tonight the words that tell me I am
doing too much for the Church in Boston, more than is my duty to
do. All her disputations are lad on my bending shoulders. Now
please do not let anyone that you have not informed already
know of what I last wrote you and let it, the church, reorganize if
she think best. Perhaps this is the best lesson for her. Do not
say one word against it and I shall not.

God tests us all, tries us on our weakest points. Hers has
always been to yield to the influence of man and not God. Now
let her pass on to her experience and the sooner the better.
When we will not learn in any other way, this is God's order of
teaching us. His rod alone will do it. And I am at last willing and
shall struggle no more."

Plainly, any student of Christian Science who undertakes to
attain a clear, correct understanding of precisely what Mrs.
Eddy's feelings were about material church organization, the
preceding letters and notes contain an honest depiction of what
was transpiring in Mrs. Eddy's thought just prior to the
September 1, 1892, reorganization of the Church of Christ,
Scientist. It is important that her feeling and thoughts be
understood, as later, when she institutes a series of meticulous
legal provisions for the dissolution, NOT of The First Church of
Christ, Scientist, but rather, of that stage of The First Church of
Christ, Scientist's history when it was under the direct
governance of Mary Baker Eddy, and called, The Mother Church
–– that long-ago dissolved entity that disobeyed Mrs. Eddy's
directives in the "Church Manual," and for nearly a century has
been running the Cause of Christian Science almost to the brink
of oblivion!

I'll continue posting more of this vitally important information in a
later post.

Bless all who have read thus far. . . .

In Unity of Good,

Dave Nolan

* * * *end of paste * * * *