TO some people who are not acquainted with the workings of Christian Science in a practical way, the form of government provided in the Manual of The Mother Church seems to conflict with the ideal of spiritual freedom held out in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. But any apparent discrepancy in this respect between teaching and practise vanishes when the office of the Manual and the relation of this code to the growth of the individual come to be more fully understood.
Mrs. Eddy says of these rules and by-laws: "They were not arbitrary opinions nor dictatorial demands, such as one person might impose on another. They were impelled by a power not one's own, were written at different dates, and as the occasion required. They sprang from necessity, the logic of events,—from the immediate demand for them as a help that must be supplied to maintain the dignity and defense of our cause; hence their simple, scientific basis, and detail so requisite to demonstrate genuine Christian Science, and which will do for the race what absolute doctrines destined for future generations might not accomplish" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 148).
The administrative features of the organization are especially designed to protect the embryonic thought from the encroachment of beliefs and tendencies foreign to the spiritual idea for which the movement stands. If Christian Science were a system of doctrinal theories, and if its propaganda were concerned with persuading men of the correctness of those theories, any code of rules and regulations that might be imposed on its devotees would be in the nature of an arbitrary restraint; but this Science is not a scheme of beliefs, it is an exact system susceptible of demonstration, like the science of numbers. As in the case of mathematics, its text-book is a consistent whole, for it is elaborated from the standpoint of fixed Principle.
