IN an inspired declaration our beloved Leader states that "the Magna Charta of Christian Science means much," that it is "essentially democratic" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 246, 247), and then she defines the essence of its democracy in a striking and inclusive phrase: "Its government is administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed." And she continues, "The church is the mouthpiece of Christian Science." There is much food for thought in these pregnant sentences. Unflinchingly they recognize the mighty spiritual fact that human action, unless it is inspired by God, the source of all real action, falls short of meeting the ultimate test of true democracy.
Every Christian Scientist has learned, to some extent at least, to seek within the divine consciousness for "that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." The world's concept of democracy, swinging broadly away from the tyranny of earlier systems and beliefs, is apt to attribute a conclusiveness to the mandates of the popular will which the logic of events may fail to sustain. Mrs. Eddy makes this very clear in her statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 225): "The history of our country, like all history, illustrates the might of Mind, and shows human power to be proportionate to its embodiment of right thinking." Recognizing that "one with God is a majority," no one need fear to suffer from walking a second mile with those whose views he may perchance not fully share, yet who, whether in home, church, business, or state, are intrusted with the accomplishment of a common purpose.
It will be noted that all three of the Synoptic Gospels include the parable in which Christ Jesus exposes the betrayal of trust through which evil maliciously attempts to possess the vineyard: "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be our's." When Mrs. Eddy, in 1892, reorganized The Mother Church and committed it to the government of God anew, she was not without experience of the attacks of the carnal mind upon forms of government less spiritually conceived. Only her sublime faith in God had enabled her to bring the church organization through those earlier stages of growth when animal magnetism, sanctimoniously masked in the forms of democracy, strove bitterly to usurp the divine direction.
