There is balm in Gilead. The Magna Charta of Christian Science, as it is understood and used, pours the healing balm upon the strife-torn earth. How may we acquire thereof? "Essentially democratic," says Mrs. Eddy in speaking of the Magna Charta of Christian Science, "its government is administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 254). Where is the place of self-government, the consequent of God's government? In human consciousness kept constantly in unity with God. The Manual of The Mother Church requires that the branch churches be distinctly democratic, and the Magna Charta of Christian Science stands for the essential democracy which is to be demonstrated.
The human sense of democracy errs because it is lacking in the understanding of God. Christianity is the application of divine Science to human affairs, and right here, in this application, goes on the distillation of true democracy, whereby the essence of spirituality is reached. Spiritual cognizance of the presence of divine Mind has a healing potency, its results being manifested in church policies that coincide with God's government. Church policies inspired by the understanding of divine Principle are demonstrations of the divine presence and power. Each activity so initiated has a divine impulse and betokens an unfolding of divine good. Such policies procure the prosperity of the branch church without strife, by the renewing of the thoughts of the members from the divine source of intelligence, by the apprehension of Truth, by the acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite.
Man-made systems, though timehonored, fail because they are devoid of spiritual power. The complexities of membership in a Christian Science branch church afford opportunities for the exercise of this spiritual power. They face us with the necessity of overcoming our own deficiencies by reflecting divine Life. By such victories we are trained to look into spiritual consciousness, and to hold our gaze there until mortal concepts are obliterated. Then perfunctory human devices of church government give place to agenda that are unfolded through demonstration of Christian Science. Spiritual understanding is scientific knowledge, and with this insight into reality we may discover man self-governed because God-governed, and so find the essential democracy of the Magna Charta of Christian Science. Our Leader speaks of mortal or material thought as "always governing itself erroneously" (Science and Health, p. 282). Democracy, misconceived, is therefore insecure, because planted on less than a spiritual, immortal basis.
