LOYALTY, which derives from the Latin root word lex, or law, has as one meaning that of being allegiant or faithful to recognized authority, whereas obedience means willingness to obey or submit to authority. Divine authority is inflexible law, and obedience to such authority determines true loyalty, for there cannot be complete loyalty without obedience. Professions or attestations of loyalty are inadequate without evidence or proof of the sincerity of such profession. Loyal students of Christian Science are necessarily obedient students, obedient to the law of God—Christian Science—as well as to the laws of the land wherein they live.
Sometimes temptation may assail a student through the argument that he need not confine his study of divine metaphysics to the authorized Christian Science textbooks —the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy — for good may be obtained from various other books. St. Paul pertinently asks (Rom. 8:24), "What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" One who loves Christian Science and demonstrates it in daily life does not seek Truth elsewhere, knowing that he has found that for which he has searched. Under "Qualifications for Membership" in the Manual of The Mother Church our Leader states (Art. IV, Sect. 1), "The Bible, together with Science and Health and other works by Mrs. Eddy, shall be his only textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science, and for teaching and practising metaphysical healing."
The loyal student obeys this By-Law implicitly. He knows that within these books is the complete way to health, happiness, success, and spirituality, because they teach the all-power of God and His Christ, operative here and now, on earth even as in heaven. They reveal that there is but one Mind, God, and but one man, made in His image and likeness. Christian Science declares the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God. It reveals God, Spirit, as perfect and man, His exact reflection, as therefore spiritual and perfect, even now and forever. Science alone denies the reality of matter, sin, disease, death, all evil, on the basis that because God, good, is All, evil of every nature must be unreal, wholly illusory. And it alone explains the oneness of God and man, inseparable and intact, yet distinct as cause and effect, Mind and idea, Spirit and its expression, Life and its eternal manifestation.
