If you have been taught by a loyal student who has taken a degree
at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, or by one who has passed
an examination by the Board of Education, fill this blank. (Man. 114)

For someone who is reputed to have labored for long periods over a single word it is not an accident when she states "has taken a degree" rather than "has received a degree." The idea behind someone taking a degree is an highly unusual one. It really doesn't make any sense until one deals with such high level concepts as the Glossary structure. Whoever has gone through this kind of demanding work that is involved, detail after detail, that encompass all of Mary Baker Eddy's works to their very depth, has literally been taught by her. There is a vast difference between someone merely reading the textbook, and someone reaching to its very depth with the rigorous demand to correlate 144 definitions to a precise structure that she has defined, and to each other. This cannot be done without a deep understanding of every aspect of it. Indeed, that is what this structure is designed to accomplish. Someone who has done this work will know with certainty whether or not he or she has taken the degree CSD, having been taught by Mary Baker Eddy in the Massachusetts Metaphysical College of which she remains the President in perpetuity.

Obviously, this is not the kind of degree that one would put on a business card. It is rather a degree of self-acknowledgement. But if this is so, why would it be important that one does "take" the degree? Why is it not sufficient for one to simply acknowledge the achievement? This, evidently is for the ultimate purpose to assure that a teacher in Christian Science is actually qualified to teach. Someone who has taken the degree, evidently is, and knows that he is.

Mary Baker Eddy stipulates that teaching in Christian Science must be based on one or both of the high level structures of Divine Science, the platform and the chapter Recapitulation. Evidently this task cannot be honestly performed unless the teacher has an intimate understanding of the vast complex that these structures are a part of. Obviously this intimate understanding can only be obtained by Mary Baker Eddy's own teaching, through the very depth of her work, in the Massachusetts Metaphysical College that she is President of, a college which functions as a spiritual idea and therefore on a higher level than a chartered physical institution.