Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/454

398 of her students by the publication in the Journal of seven fixed rules, which announced that she was not to be consulted regarding the personal or church difficulties of her followers. Her next step was to disorganise the Boston church. Upon this action the Journal of February, 1890, comments as follows:

The dissolution of the visible organisation of the church is the sequence and complement of that of the college corporation and association. The college disappeared that the spirit of Christ might have freer course among its students and all who come into the understanding of Divine Science, the bonds of the church were thrown away so that its members might assemble themselves together to "provoke one another to good works" in the bond only of love.

After Mrs. Eddy disorganised it, the church continued to hold regular services and, to all intents and purposes, went on just as before with the one important exception that it held no more business meetings and transacted no business. The real reason for this disorganisation seems to have been just that, for the time, Mrs. Eddy wanted no business transacted. Her explanation that organisation was a detriment to spirituality could scarcely have been more than a convenient pretext, for at the same time that she put this check upon the Boston