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.