Church

Obedience has a prominent place in these writings.  Obedience, not to the personal Mary Baker Eddy, but to Truth, and Love, and Principle which she epitomised and still epitomises in her writings.

As one reads the Clerk’s report about the history of the church to that date (1906), such gratitude is felt for those “honest seekers for Truth” (p. ix Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy) who were brave enough to leave their old churches and go forth with their Leader to found the church.

In speaking of the Communion Sunday of 1880, Mr. Johnson (Clerk) says (p. 50 The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany): “This was indeed the little church in the wilderness, and few knew of its teachings, but those few saw the grandeur of its work and were willing to labor for the Cause.”

Are we still, “a little church in the wilderness”? 

WILDERNESS. Loneliness; doubt; darkness.  Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.  (ibid p. 597)

However, there is no “little” church, is there? 

CHURCH.  The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.

               The Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick. (ibid p. 583)

Joyce Voysey