As used in connection with the philosophy of government, the terms "democracy" and "democratic" refer to a government in which the authority and right to govern are recognized as vested, either directly or through chosen representatives, in the people themselves. True democracy is the highest form of human government and keeps open the way for thought to find that God alone governs man.
It was at least a glimpse of the promise of government under divine Principle that led Thomas Jefferson to pronounce in the Declaration of Independence, as a sufficient basis for political democracy, that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights. . . . That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." It was more than a glimpse of the same truth that inspired Abraham Lincoln later, at a time when the Constitution of the United States, born of the Declaration, was under stress, to proclaim in his Gettysburg address that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," as he characterized democracy, "shall not perish from the earth."
What a confirmation both of the declaration of Jefferson and of the prophecy of Lincoln is found in Mary Baker Eddy's words on page 106 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Like our nation, Christian Science has its Declaration of Independence. God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love."
