________________________________________________
_ There are a Treasurer and a Clerk. They are elected by the Board of
Directors. That is to say, by Mrs. Eddy.
Their terms of office expire on the first Tuesday in June of each year,
"or upon the election of their successors." They must be watchfully
obedient and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and install their
successors with a suddenness that can be unpleasant to them. It goes
without saying that the Treasurer manages the Treasury to suit Mrs. Eddy,
and is in fact merely Temporary Deputy Treasurer.
Apparently the Clerk has but two duties to perform: to read messages from
Mrs. Eddy to First Members assembled in solemn Council, and provide lists
of candidates for Church membership. The select body entitled First
Members are the aristocracy of the Mother-Church, the Charter Members,
the Aborigines, a sort of stylish but unsalaried little College of
Cardinals, good for show, but not indispensable. Nobody is indispensable
in Mrs. Eddy's empire; she sees to that.
When the Pastor Emeritus sends a letter or message to that little
Sanhedrin, it is the Clerk's "imperative duty" to read it "at the place
and time specified." Otherwise, the world might come to an end. These
are fine, large frills, and remind us of the ways of emperors and such.
Such do not use the penny-post, they send a gilded and painted special
messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and business comes to a
sudden and solemn and awful stop; and in the impressive hush that
follows, the Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his "imperative
duty." If he should neglect it, his official life would end. It is the
same with this Mother-Church Clerk; "if he fail to perform this important
function of his office," certain majestic and unshirkable solemnities
must follow: a special meeting "shall" be called; a member of the Church
"shall" make formal complaint; then the Clerk "shall" be "removed from
office." Complaint is sufficient, no trial is necessary.
There is something very sweet and juvenile and innocent and pretty about
these little tinsel vanities, these grave apings of monarchical fuss and
feathers and ceremony, here on our ostentatiously democratic soil. She
is the same lady that we found in the Autobiography, who was so naively
vain of all that little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up
and annexed. A person's nature never changes. What it is in childhood,
it remains. Under pressure, or a change of interest, it can partially or
wholly disappear from sight, and for considerable stretches of time, but
nothing can ever permanently modify it, nothing can ever remove it. _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI - BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI - THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND THE PRESIDENT
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