CHAPTER XXVI
TRAINING THE VINE—HOW MRS. EDDY HAS ORGANISED HER CHURCH—HER MANAGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE—THE CHURCH MANUAL—RECENT MODIFICATIONS IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE—MEMBERSHIP OF THE CHURCH—PRACTICAL RESULTS OF MRS. EDDY'S LIFE-WORK
The years since 1892 Mrs. Eddy has spent in training her church in the way she desires it to go, in making it more and more her own, and in issuing by-law after by-law to restrict her followers in their church privileges and to guide them in their daily walk. Mrs. Eddy, one must remember, was fifty years of age before she knew what she wanted to do; sixty when she bethought herself of the most effective way to do it,—by founding a church,—and seventy when she achieved her greatest triumph—the reorganisation and personal control of the Mother Church. But she did not stop there. Between her seventieth and eightieth year, and even up to the present time, she has displayed remarkable ingenuity in disciplining her church and its leaders, and resourcefulness and energy in the prosecution of her plans.
Mrs. Eddy's system of church government was not devised in a month or a year, but grew, by-law on by-law, to meet new emergencies and situations. To attain the end she desired it was necessary to keep fifty or sixty thousand people working
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