Mother-Church has permanent and unchallengeable control, upon
every one of them Mrs. Eddy has set her irremovable grip. She holds,
in perpetuity, autocratic and indisputable sovereignty and control over
every branch Church in the earth; and yet says, in that sugary, naive,
angel-beguiling way of hers, that the Mother-Church:

"shall assume no official control of other churches of this
denomination."

Whereas in truth the unmeddled-with liberties of a branch Christian
Science Church are but very, very few in number, and are these:

1. It can appoint its own furnace-stoker, winters. 2. It can appoint
its own fan-distributors, summers. 3. It can, in accordance with its own
choice in the matter, burn, bury, or preserve members who are pretending
to be dead--whereas there is no such thing as death. 4. It can take up a
collection.

The branch Churches have no important liberties, none that give them an
important voice in their own affairs. Those are all locked up, and Mrs.
Eddy has the key. "Local Self-Government" is a large name and sounds
well; but the branch Churches have no more of it than have the privates
in the King of Dahomey's army.

"MOTHER-CHURCH UNIQUE"

Mrs. Eddy, with an envious and admiring eye upon the solitary and
rivalless and world-shadowing majesty of St. Peter's, reveals in her
By-laws her purpose to set the Mother-Church apart by itself in a
stately seclusion and make it duplicate that lone sublimity under the
Western sky. The By-law headed "Mother-Church Unique" says--

"In its relation to other Christian Science churches, the Mother-Church
stands alone.

"It occupies a position that no other Church can fill.

"Then for a branch Church to assume such position would be disastrous to
Christian Science,

"Therefore--"

Therefore no branch Church is allowed to have branches. There shall
be no Christian Science St. Peter's in the earth but just one--the
Mother-Church in Boston.

"NO FIRST MEMBERS"

But for the thoughtful By-law thus entitled, every Science branch in the
earth would imitate the Mother-Church and set up an aristocracy. Every
little group of ground-floor Smiths and Furgusons and Shadwells and
Simpsons that organized a branch would assume that great title, of
"First Members," along with its vast privileges of "discussing" the
weather and casting blank ballots, and soon there would be such a
locust-plague of them burdening the globe that the title would lose its
valu