The President and Board of Directors will succeed her, and the government
will go on without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that interpretation.
All the Mother-Church's vast powers are concentrated in that Board. Mrs.
Eddy's unlimited personal reservations make the Board's ostensible
supremacy, during her life, a sham, and the Board itself a shadow. But
Mrs. Eddy has not made those reservations for any one but herself--they
are distinctly personal, they bear her name, they are not usable by
another individual. When she dies her reservations die, and the Board's
shadow-powers become real powers, without the change of any important By-
law, and the Board sits in her place as absolute and irresponsible a
sovereign as she was.
It consists of but five persons, a much more manageable Cardinalate than
the Roman Pope's. I think it will elect its Pope from its own body, and
that it will fill its own vacancies. An elective Papacy is a safe and
wise system, and a long-liver.
