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Man. p. 19
Helen M. Wright
©Copyright 1981 Helen M.
Wright
©2000 Internet Edition
ISBN 1-886505-25-X
Tell the truth concerning the lie.
—MARY BAKER EDDY
A lie left to itself is not so soon destroyed as with
the help of truth-telling.
—MARY BAKER EDDY
Error, when found out, is two-thirds destroyed, and
the remaining third destroys itself.
—MARY BAKER EDDY
To all who love and revere God's recording angel, Mary
Baker Eddy; who long to see her place in scriptural prophecy acknowledged; her
name restored to its proper place in world esteem and human history; and
To all who have wondered why she rated her Church
Manual second only to Science and Health; why she said: "Eternity awaits
our Church Manual."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Dr. Harry R. Shawk, of Lacey,
Washington, for his kindness in allowing me to use material from the following
of his numerous copyrighted cassette tapes:
No. 974002--The Church Manual and Church
Government
No. 975050--What Do the Estoppels Really Stop?
No. 976051--What the Full Bench Actually Said.
Special thanks go to Abbie Bentley for her invaluable
contribution, encouragement and support.
Above all, the author's deep gratitude is due Mary
Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, for her
unparalleled gift to mankind in this age, the Christian Science textbook, and
her other writings, which show humanity its divinity and how to realize
scientifically that each one of us is God in action.
Explanatory
Notes
Italics not appearing in the original quotations are
sometimes used, not to emphasize, but to identify that portion of the quote
directly applicable to the point under discussion.
Capitalization of the term "By-Laws": Mrs. Eddy
capitalized the term "By-Laws" because she knew God had dictated those By-Laws:
"They were impelled by a power not one's own" (see Manual, p. 3).
The title "Science and Health" is not italicized for
the same reason that the Bible is not ordinarily italicized, in deference to
the status of these books as divine teachers.
Explanation: "CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT"
as used throughout this book refers to a wholly spiritual state of
consciousness to be attained by every individual, wherein man is aware of the
omnipresence of present perfection as the fact of being, thus demonstrating the
kingdom of heaven on earth. Mrs. Eddy used the terms "universal" and
"triumphant" in the first Church Manual, copyrighted in 1895, as
referring to the Church she founded. She shortly capitalized these terms, and
in 1903 changed the early wording to read as we have it in the Manual
today: "CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT"
IMPORTANT NOTE TO THE READER
In 1866 Mary Baker Eddy discovered the Christ Science
or the divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love. She named this discovery Christian
Science. Mrs. Eddy saw that God is All-in-all and is divine consciousness or
divine Mind. In her textbook, Science and Health, page 468, she states, "All is
infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." Her
Science teaches the omnipresence of present perfection. A great paradigm shift
is necessary in order that humanity may come into line with what Mary Baker
Eddy saw as the reality of being. This paradigm shift is today coming through
"revolutions ecclesiastical and social" through a consciousness revolution. A
vast overturning of standpoints is presently taking place in which a spiritual
scientific model of consciousness is supplanting the old model of
materiality.
"The only fact concerning any material concept is,
that it is neither scientific nor eternal, but subject to change and
dissolution." Understanding is the substance of Christian Science. This
understanding operates as a solvent within human consciousness, stripping away
our ignorantly cherished beliefs, and revealing the eternal facts of being
which constitute reality. Mary Baker Eddy fully expected the Science she
brought mankind to accomplish exactly what it was divinely commissioned to do:
dissolve all material concepts with the introduction into human consciousness
of spiritual ideas.
This understanding, active within the consciousness of
Christ Jesus, was responsible for the dissolution of every molecule of matter
in his ascending evolvement. As an individual, Jesus awakened from the myth of
matter and established for all mankind the sublime goal of conscious
attainment. It has been said that Jesus gave the laboratory experiment and Mary
Baker Eddy wrote the scientific textbook explaining how it was done. She
discovered the Science behind Jesus' works. God revealed to her the unity
between the absolute letter of Christianity and the spirit of Christianity. She
saw that this unity of the absolute letter and the spirit of Christianity
dwells forever in the divine Mind, and so is the Principle of man's being. This
Principle reveals itself through the human character, as Mrs. Eddy explains on
page 246 of Miscellany. Mrs. Eddy reduced this absolute letter and
spirit of Christianity to a divinely scientific system. This system works
through a calculus of divine ideas, and it is today being taught in
classrooms.
Mrs. Eddy's discovery of divine Science ushered in a
totally new age--an age in which we will find ourselves "kings and priests unto
God." An understanding of her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, gives the student a new Mind, a totally new consciousness in which
the heart communes directly with God, good--ultimate reality. Mrs. Eddy taught
mankind that finding the kingdom of heaven a present reality rests with the
individual and his understanding. The kingdom is within, and it is within
consciousness that we find our oneness with divine Principle, just as it is
within consciousness that we find our oneness with the principle of mathematics
or music. Each must become consciously aware of his individual oneness with
divine Principle. This is the crux of Mary Baker Eddy's message to
humanity.
Until Mrs. Eddy "learned the vastness of Christian
Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of Truth, she
cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and
universal, acceptance." She soon found how subtle and determined were the ways
of the carnal mind: "The powers of evil are leagued together in secret
conspiracy against the Lord and his Christ, as expressed and operative in
Christian Science." The central point of attack in this "conspiracy" has been
Mrs. Eddy herself. Above all else the enemy seeks to destroy the image of Mary
Baker Eddy as God's recording angel to this age.
In this book, and in its predecessor, Mary Baker
Eddy: A New Look, the author sounds a bugle call to reinstate Mary Baker
Eddy in her proper place in world esteem and human history and to acquaint all
mankind with the fact that Mary Baker Eddy fulfilled Jesus' prophecy to St.
John concerning the woman of the Apocalypse. The Science Mary Baker Eddy
brought reveals man's true Mind to be the Mind of God.
That Mrs. Eddy was aware of the enemy's plan to move
her out of her God-appointed place as the Leader of the Christian Science
Movement can be seen from her two widely published letters:
One was a letter to Edward A. Kimball in which she
explained that for the world to understand her in her true light and life would
do more for the Cause of Christian Science than anything else could. Mrs. Eddy
knew she was the "woman of the Apocalypse," the Revelator to this age, the
woman Jesus had revealed to St. John in the Book of Revelation. The enemy, Mrs.
Eddy said, tried harder to hide her true identity than to win any other point.
She went on to say that Jesus' life and character had been treated in the same
way her life and character were being treated (and we might add, are being
treated today, in view of the disobedience to her Manual estoppels, and
the failure to challenge the subtle and open denigration of her character.)
Mrs. Eddy regretted to see that loyal students were not more awake to "this
great demand" to meet the enemy's tactics.
When Judge Septimus J. Hanna wrote Mrs. Eddy for
advice regarding lecturing on Christian Science, she wrote him a similar letter
in which she again explained that the united plan of the evil doers was to keep
hidden her true identity as having fulfilled the prophecy of Christ Jesus--"to
keep her as she is, out of sight." She told Judge Hanna that keeping the truth
of her character before the public would help the students, and do more than
all else for the Cause. Christianity, she said, lost its purity because of the
persecution, defaming, and killing of its defenders. There is no doubt that
Mrs. Eddy, when she placed the estoppel clauses in the Church Manual,
knew that those who urged obedience to those estoppels would be defamed and
persecuted, in order to protect the material organization and its continuity;
hence her urgent warning: "Do not let this period repeat this mistake." "Tell
the truth about your Leader," she said. "That will heal and save. " She knew
the lie would have just the opposite effect and that the enemy knew this more
clearly than do most Christian Scientists
In Miscellany she wrote: "The effort of
disloyal students to blacken me and to keep my works from public
recognition--students seeking only public notoriety, whom I have assisted
pecuniarily and striven to uplift morally--has been made too many times and has
failed too often for me to fear it." Then, because she didn't have the time to
be continually pursuing a lie, she asked "the help of others in this matter ...
A lie left to itself is not so soon destroyed as with the help of
truth-telling" The sole purpose of this book is to "tell the truth concerning
the lie."
Strive it ever so hard, The Church of Christ,
Scientist, can never do for its Leader what its Leader has done for this
church; but its members can so protect their own thoughts that they are not
unwittingly made to deprive their Leader of her rightful place as the revelator
to this age of the immortal truths testified to by Jesus and the prophets
[concerning her].
CONTENTS
Dedication - v
Acknowledgements -
vi
Explanatory notes -
vii
Important Note to the
Reader - ix
Abbreviations -
xv
Preface - xvii
The lawsuit against the Independent Christian Science
Church of Plainfield, xvii; Is the term Christian Science a "trademark"? xvii;
Mrs. Eddy's position on church organizations in her first edition of Science
and Health, xxi.
Chapter I - Historical
Background - 1
The Archives, 3; the Dickey "Memoirs", 6; The Second
Church Organization, 8; Mrs. Eddy's Theocratic Government, 12; Report of the
Committee on General Welfare, 15; The heresy trial of John W Doorly, 20
Chapter II - Mary Baker Eddy's
Three Deedsof Trust and the Estoppel Clauses - 26
Do cuments to be discussed, 26; Mrs. Eddy's three
legal documents and her First and Second Church Organizations, 27; Deeds of
Trust of 1892 and 1903, 31; Difference between 1892 Deed of Trust and Second
Church Organization, 32; Publishing Society Deed of Trust, 34; Estoppel Clauses
in the Manual, 42; Supreme Judicial Court recognized Estoppels, 52; Why did not
Mrs. Eddy bluntly state her Intentions? 53; How the Estoppels work, 55
Chapter III Legalism's
Challenge to Mrs. Eddy's Church Manual - 65
First Church Organization 1879-1889, 68; Second Church
Organization--First Manual, 68; Second Manual, 68; Eighth Manual, 70;
Tenth Manual, 70; Twelfth Manual, 70; Eighteenth Manual, 71; Twentieth Manual,
72; Twenty-Eighth Manual, 72; Twenty-Ninth Manual, 72; First and Second Deed of
Trust, 74; Important Change in Church Manual, 75; Two Boards of Directors
Established--One Fiduciary, One Ecclesiastical, 76; Recognition of Estoppel
Clauses by Supreme Judicial Court, 81; George Wendell Adams article, 81; The
Extension is Branch not Mother, 91; Second Deed of Trust not Supplementary, 91;
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, is Branch, 95; Mission of the Publishing
Society, 96
Chapter IV The Great
Literature Litigation and What the Full Bench Actually Said - 99
Four Errors in Bill in Equity, 101; Second Bill in
Equity, 102; Errors in Second Bill in Equity, 102; Interim Bill in Equity,
April 10, 1920,106; Findings of the Full Bench, 112; Interim Injunction, 112;
The Court's Decision, 114; Why the Publishing Trustees did not appeal to the
U.S. Supreme Court, 127; Directors' Misinterpretation of Court's Decision leads
to Ecclesiastical Monopoly, 127
Chapter V Science and Health
Copyright "Act" 1971 - 131
1934 Copyright Illegal, 132; the 1971 Copyright
Action, 134; Copyright Act Unconstitutional, 135; Committee on the Judiciary
Hearing, 140; Testimony of Attorney Hackman, 155; Choose Ye This Day Whom Ye
Will Serve, 159; Result of the 70-Year Rule in Disobedience to the Church
Manual, 161
Conclusion - 165
APPENDIX
Appendices - 169
(1) Mrs. Eddy's Will and Two Codicils - 171
(2) Deed of Trust of September 1, 1892 - 182
(3) Deed of Trust of March 19, 1903 - 185
(4) Christian Science Publishing Society Deed of Trust
January 25, 1898 - 187
(5) Bill in Equity dated March 25, 1919 - 193
(6) Bill in Equity dated April 10, 1921 - 212
(7) Decision of the Full Bench of the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts, November 23,1921 - 223
(8) Copyright Act on Science and Health: Committee on
the Judiciary Report - 255
Index - 305
llustrations and Facsimiles
The Sunburst
- opp. 24
Signed statement
by Mrs. Eddy to Laura Sargent, 1910 - 37
Extract from
letter by Mrs. Eddy to Augusta Stetson, 1898 - 40-41
Mrs. Eddy's
letter stating that The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was her
church and not the Board of Directors' Church - 82-84
The Raising of
Lazarus - 85
The First Church
of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts (architectural drawing) - 92
The Anointing of
Jesus by Mary: "The true worshipers worship the Father in Spirit and in
Truth!'--Jesus - opp. 142
The angel with
the little book - opp. 142
Letter from
Library of Congress Copyright Office to D. J. Nolan, confirming no copyright
registration exists on Science and Health 1907-1910 - 142a
Chart showing
rise and decline of registered Christian Science Practitioners and
Churches, 1910-1980 - 160
____________________________
Abbreviations for the titles of Mrs. Eddy's writings
are those used in the Concordances to her works as follows
S&H - Science and Health
Man - Church Manual
Mis - Miscellaneous Writings
Ret - Retrospection and Introspection
My - The First Church of Christ Scientist and
Miscellany
Rud - Rudimental Divine Science
Un - Unity of Good
No - No and Yes
'00 - Message for 1900
Po - Poems
PREFACE
IN 1980 a lawsuit was filed by the Christian Science
Board of Directors of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston,
Massachusetts, against Independent Christian Science Church of Plainfield, New
Jersey, in which the Boston Board of Directors asked the Court to rule that the
term "Christian Science" is a trademark, and as such is the property of the
Board of Directors in Boston. The issue before the Court can be summarized in
one question:
Do five individuals in Boston own the term "Christian
Science?--do the members of Independent Christian Science Church of Plainfield
have the right to call themselves Christian Scientists, or can they be deprived
of their constitutional right to religious liberty and freedom to practice
their religion, in accordance with their interpretation of the teachings of
Mary Baker Eddy?
That the Board of Directors is trying legally to
prevent non-church affiliated Christian Scientists from using the name
"Christian Science," "Christ Science," or "Christian Scientist," should awaken
every Christian Scientist to the further implications. Do the Courts of the
land have the power to decide who can and who cannot call himself a Baptist, a
Methodist, a Quaker, or a Christian Scientist?
This action by the Board of Directors in Boston to
debar Christian Scientists from using the words "Christian Science" unless they
have obtained the Board of Directors' express permission and approval, seems
anomalous, and is entirely contrary to the Christian Science doctrine that "God
has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government,
reason, and conscience."
For the Directors to claim ownership of the term
Christian Science seems an attempt to hold a completely spiritual idea
"in the grasp of matter." We might compare this to an institution such as
Oxford or Cambridge claiming ownership of the science of mathematics, and only
those subscribing to its conclusions and ways of teaching may use mathematics
or be called mathematicians. Any such claim to the ownership of the science of
mathematics would be considered ridiculous, and the attempt of the Board of
Directors in Boston to claim ownership of the term Christian Science is no less
ludicrous.
The thought of granting exclusive authority to a
church body or any other body to control the use of such broad terminology is
repugnant to the natural instincts of a Scientist who subscribes to Mrs. Eddy's
"Declaration of Independence," wherein she writes: "God has endowed man within
alienable 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 ' "
This statement by Mary Baker Eddy, and her "Magna
Charta ' " are the key to her Church Manual, and the key to the
understanding of this book. "The Magna Charta of Christian Science means much
," says Mrs. Eddy,"... It stands for the inalienable, universal rights of men.
Essentially democratic, its government is administered by the common consent of
the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed.
The church is the mouthpiece of Christian Science--its law and gospel are
according to Christ, Jesus; its rules are health, holiness, and
immortality--equal rights and privileges, equality of the sexes, rotation in
office."
Mrs. Eddy's Manual contains every provision necessary
for the immediate establishment of the enlightened government that her
Declaration of Independence in Science and Health, as well as her Magna Charta,
urge upon us. These two statements epitomize the spirit of the Manual
when the Manual is accepted in its entirety as written by Mary Baker
Eddy.
A Court ruling in favor of the Boston Board of
Directors would deprive tens of thousands of loyal Christian Scientists of the
right to use the name Christian Science to identify themselves and their
activities.
The material in this book will prove Mary Baker Eddy
planned brilliantly for the future of the Christian Science Movement when she
was no longer personally present. Her plans and intentions, however, were
thwarted by the self-interest of a disloyal Board of Directors who annulled the
By-Laws and disobediently continued in office.
Students of Christian Science who study the Church
Manual are often puzzled concerning those By-Laws containing an estoppel
clause, meaning that an action cannot take place without Mrs. Eddy's consent.
Usually the student is told that at the time of Mrs. Eddy's departure the
government of the church passed into the hands of the Board of Directors. But
eventually one learns that Mrs. Eddy insisted on leaving the estoppels in the
Manual even though she was repeatedly asked to remove them and advised
by her Board of Directors that if she did not remove the estoppels the church
would be crippled at the time of her passing. Thus the student is faced with
the decision: Do I follow the Board of Directors or do I follow Mary Baker
Eddy?
The twenty-six or more estoppels in the Manual
terminated The Mother Church and the offices of her Board of Directors.
Every vital activity of The Mother Church required her signature, consent, or
approval. When in December, 1910, Mrs. Eddy passed on, the five-member
ecclesiastical Board of Directors, in power at that time, decided to ignore the
estoppels (as has every Board since) thus violating the Church Manual
and substituting human for divine guidance.
Four days after Mrs. Eddy's passing the Board of
Directors issued a public statement to the press in which they stated:
"The authority given the Board of Directors by the
Church Manual remains intact and is fully adequate for the government of
the organization and all its affairs. The policy of the Board will be the same
as under Mrs. Eddy's direction."
Within a month or two of Mrs. Eddy's passing the Board
issued a Manual of their own, the 89th Manual, in which they
deleted Mrs. Eddy's name and title as Pastor Emeritus from the list of church
officers and extended their control over the branch churches. The Board
announced themselves to be Mrs. Eddy's successor, and gradually assumed the
position of "the highest ecclesiastical court in the land."
Except for a few brave voices heroically raised in
defense of Mary Baker Eddy's plan for spiritual government, the field in
general never questioned the ecclesiastical hierarchy that developed as the
result of waiving the Manual's estoppels.
Recently a number of members have begun to study the
history of the Manual and the progressive ideas of Mary Baker Eddy. They
now realize The Mother Church was dissolved at the Annual Meeting held in June,
1911, when the officers of The Mother Church could not be elected or reelected
without the approval of the Pastor Emeritus, Mary Baker Eddy. Continuing The
Mother Church government after the Annual Meeting in June of 1911 could only be
done by waiving and annulling the estoppel clauses.
Article XXXV, Sections 1 and 3, have been violated
since 1911 by those who have assumed a "perpetuity" not granted by the author
of the Church Manual.
Because the Board of Directors sought a legal
interpretation of the Manual's sacred By-Laws, the Christian Science
Movement has been held in "the grasp of legal power" for the past seventy
years. Today, as when Mrs. Eddy wrote in Miscellaneous Writings long
ago,
The foundation on which our church [is] built [has] to
be rescued from the grasp of legal power, and ... it must be put back into the
arms of Love, if we would not be found fighting against God.
In his 1980 booklet, Science and Health and the
Church Manual, W. Gordon Brown throws light on the deep spiritual meaning
of the Christian Science Manual. He states: "In its relation to Science
and Health, the Manual liberates Christian Science from the shackles of
organized religion, and so begins to solve for mankind the problems of life
seemingly held captive in matter."
Mrs. Eddy's Manual "stands alone, uniquely
adapted to form the budding thought and hedge it about with divine Love." It
contains rules and laws necessary to reach her goal, namely, to establish the
Church of Christ, Scientist, as the CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT--"the
[eternal] church, built without hands. "
Because her followers wanted an outward sign, a
material church, Mrs. Eddy allowed it as a concession to the spiritual
blindness of that period. The real church, the Church of Christ, Scientist, is
a wholly spiritual state of consciousness which will eventually be attained by
everyone.
No one knew better than Mrs. Eddy the great danger
that lay in the illusion that the material institution was the permanent and
ultimate goal. She knew "there was never a religion or philosophy lost to the
centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality." In an effort
to prevent the development of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the idolatry of
loyalty to Boston rather than to divine Principle, Mrs. Eddy completely
dissolved The Mother Church and its activities at her passing.
The theocratic government of Mary Baker Eddy as
outlined in the Church Manual ceased after her departure. The high
standard of government she maintained by strict obedience to God's promptings
should never have been replaced by a dictatorial regime of five persons. Had
she wished this to happen she surely would not have inserted the twenty-six or
more estoppels that abolished their office as Directors and brought all Mother
Church activity to a halt; she could have enacted The Mother Church legally as
she did the Publishing Society, and the local Boston church which she
established through two Deeds of Trust.
A Science does not need a church. Mrs. Eddy's position
on this subject is expressed in her first edition of Science and Health, a
position she maintained steadfastly to the end:
We have no need of creeds and church organizations to
sustain or explain a demonstrable platform that defines itself in healing the
sick and casting out error...The mistake the disciples of Jesus made to found
religious organizations and church rites, if indeed they did this, was one the
Master did not make.
In 1910, at the completion of Mary Baker Eddy's
mission, the breadth and grandeur of universal truth and Science lay before
mankind. Then, through what has become known as the "1910 Coup,' the Christian
Science Movement began its decline toward a less and less influential world
force in the "healing of the nations." Fortunately, however, since the Board of
Directors usurped power and authority by ignoring Mrs. Eddy's estoppel clauses,
we have witnessed the slow step by step egress of Mrs. Eddy's divine
revelation--egress from the limitations, the ignorance, the cruelty,
stagnation, and into the joy, grace, and glory of the liberty an understanding
of her Science brings.
This book contains important documents; and the
explanation of information they contain should hasten acceptance of the divine
legacy of freedom bequeathed us by Mrs. Eddy's Church Manual estoppel
clauses.
This is the first time these documents have appeared
in one volume. Until now this information has been scattered. Some of it was
available in separate tracts and pamphlets by courageous writers who gave
brief, brave helpful accounts; certain legal documents could be found in
courts, in various deeds of registry. Few people, however, took the trouble to
seek them out. Now it has been brought together in one book. Each reader may
now judge, may now decide. Was Mary Baker Eddy right to dissolve The Mother
Church at the time of her passing? Or was the Board of Directors right when it
continued the material organization in spite of Mrs. Eddy's explicit
instructions in the Church Manual which terminate The Mother Church and
its activities? Waiving the estoppels in the Manual instead of obeying
them has led inexorably to today's crisis, the lawsuit filed against
Independent Christian Science Church of Plainfield, and the Board of Directors'
claim to the ownership of the term "Christian Science."
In the hope that the past seventy years have prepared
all Christian Scientists to accept total freedom, we commit these pages to
honest seekers for truth.
H. M. W.
June, 1981
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