From the "Historical Sketch" in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, we learn how Mrs. Eddy's sense of Church progressively unfolded. It is an inspiration to the present-day Christian Scientist to study the steps towards the foundation of The Mother Church and to check his own unfoldment with them.
In 1879 it was voted, on Mrs. Eddy's motion, "To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Church Manual, p. 17). Thereafter her Church went through many vicissitudes. The vagaries of its members and their methods are recounted in the various biographies of Mrs. Eddy, published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, and also in her autobiography, "Retrospection and Introspection."
In the latter she tells us that when she was busy with other work and unable to be in the pulpit herself, there was no student who could maintain the Church in harmony and prosperity. She recognized that a crisis had come and in 1889 recommended that the material organization be dissolved.
