Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/521

Rh as if the church were the first object in their lives; to encourage hundreds of these to adopt church-work as their profession and make it their only chance of worldly success; and yet to hold all this devotion and energy in subservience to Mrs. Eddy herself and to prevent any one of these healers, or preachers, or teachers from attaining any marked personal prominence and from acquiring a personal following. The church was to have all the vigour of spontaneous growth, but was to grow only as Mrs. Eddy permitted and to confine itself to the trellis she had built for it.

Naturally, the first danger lay in the pastors of her branch churches. Mrs. Stetson and Mrs. Laura Lathrop had built up strong churches in New York; Mrs. Ewing was pastor of a flourishing church in Chicago; Mrs. Leonard of another in Brooklyn; Mrs. Williams in Buffalo; Mrs. Steward in Toronto; Mr. Norcross in Denver. These pastors naturally became leaders among the Christian Scientists in their respective communities, and came to be regarded as persons authorised to expound Science and Health and the doctrines of Christian Science. Such a state of things Mrs. Eddy considered dangerous, not only because of the personal influence the pastor might acquire over his flock, but because a pastor might, even without intending to do so, give a personal colour to his interpretation of her words. In his sermon he might expand her texts and improvise upon her themes until gradually his hearers would come to accept his own opinions for Mrs. Eddy's. The church in Toronto might come to emphasise doctrines which the church in Denver did not; here was a possible beginning of differing denominations.