We know what she means, in both instances, but a low-priced Clerk would not necessarily know, and on a salary like his he could quite excusably aver that the Pastor Emeritus had commanded him to come and make proclamation that she was author of the Bible, and that she was thinking of discharging some Scriptural sonnets and other enigmas upon the congregation.  It could lose him his place, but it would not be fair, if it happened before the edict about “Understanding Communications” was promulgated.

“READERS” AGAIN

The By-law book makes a showy pretence of orderliness and system, but it is only a pretence.  I will not go so far as to say it is a harum-scarum jumble, for it is not that, but I think it fair to say it is at least jumbulacious in places.  For instance, Articles III. and IV. set forth in much detail the qualifications and duties of Readers, she then skips some thirty pages and takes up the subject again.  It looks like slovenliness, but it may be only art.  The belated By-law has a sufficiently quiet look, but it has a ton of dynamite in it.  It makes all the Christian Science Church Readers on the globe the personal chattels of Mrs. Eddy.  Whenever she chooses, she can stretch her long arm around the world’s fat belly and flirt a Reader out of his pulpit, though he be tucked away in seeming safety and obscurity in a lost village in the middle of China: 

“In any Church.  Sec. 2.  The Pastor Emeritus of the Mother-Church shall have the right (through a letter addressed to the individual and Church of which he is the Reader) to remove a Reader from this office in any Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America and in foreign nations; or to appoint the Reader to fill any office belonging to the Christian Science denomination.”

She does not have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to his family why she takes the bread out of their mouths and turns them out-of-doors homeless and ashamed in a strange land; she does not have to do anything but send a letter and say:  “Pack!—­and ask no questions!”

Has the Pope this power?—­the other Pope—­the one in Rome.  Has he anything approaching it?  Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice, and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish?  Not in America.  And not elsewhere, we may believe.

It is odd and strange, to see intelligent and educated people among us worshipping this self-seeking and remorseless tyrant as a God.  This worship is denied—­by persons who are themselves worshippers of Mrs. Eddy.  I feel quite sure that it is a worship which will continue during ages.