The strength, permanency, and progress of the Christian Science church depend on the alertness and success of its members in governing themselves and their church on the basis of spiritual understanding and demonstration.
After years of prayer, toil, and sacrifice in the endeavor to establish her church, our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, discerned this great fact, and she sounded the keynote in the Manual of The Mother Church when she wrote (p. 19), "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., is designed to be built on the Rock, Christ; even the understanding and demonstration of divine Truth, Life, and Love, healing and saving the world from sin and death; thus to reflect in some degree the Church Universal and Triumphant." And in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she says (p. 355), "Without this understanding, no one is capable of impartial or correct criticism, because demonstration and spiritual understanding are God's immortal keynotes, proved to be such by our Master and evidenced by the sick who are cured and by the sinners who are reformed."
To attain an ever-increasing understanding and demonstration of this Science requires consecration and sacrifice of the highest order on the part of the Christian Scientist. No matter how obscure or prominent his position in the Christian Science church may be, one must ever guard against trusting human opinion or mistaking material outlining for understanding and demonstration. Paul writes, "My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."
