The Philosophy of Christian Science

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN referring to Christian Science, one may use advantageously an irritating literary device of the sixteenth century and call the system " a philosophical religion and a religious philosophy!' Which of these it is preeminently it is almost impossible to say; while Scripture is one of the points of departure , Scripture must be interpreted only in the light of certain philosophical speculations of a rationalistic nature, speculations made first by Christ and then expressed cryptically in the New Testament, where they have been available for hundreds of years but understood for the first time by Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy of Bow, Massachusetts, United States of America, i.n the nineteenth century. Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy are no less inseparable than Christian Science and Christ. The Bible and Science and Health are treated as equals; they lie side by side in the Christian Science Reading Rooms.1 In the standard Sunday services, passages from both books are read aloud. :Moreover, there is within the church a rigid set of laws governing the writings of Mrs. Eddy to insure that they be preserved exactly as they were left by their author's last revision.2 Mrs. Eddy 'A Reading Room functions as an "every-day" church, a species of oratory, where the faithful can come to read the passage from Scripture and Science and Health prescribed by the Christian Science organization for each day. The silence observed in the Reading Rooms has about it a church, rather than a library, quality. 2 All her life after the first publication of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy was engaged sporadically in revising the text. This resulted in a large number of new editions, each of which made its predecessor obsolete. Consequently, every loyal Christian Scientist was expected to purchase a copy of each new revision as it came off the press.-Edwin F. Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, the Biography of a Virginal Mind (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1930), p. 292. Since the death of Mrs. Eddy, however, no changes have been made in the writings of the founder; in fact, extreme care is taken that these writings shall be preserved without alteration. In accordance with this policy, it was explained to the present writer in a Christian 191 ROSEMARY ZITA LAUER had proclaimed personally in 1895 that there should no longer be pastors in her church, but Science and Health itself should be regarded as the pastor.3 This place of eminence which Science and Health holds among Christian Scientists, its seeming equality with Scripture, is explicable in view of Mrs. Eddy's conviction that the work was divinely inspired and was even a kind of spiritual child begotten through Mrs. Eddy's communing with the deity, just as the spiritual Christ-not the physical Jesus, but the Divine Principle which was in Him-was the fruit of the first Mary's communing with the Holy Spirit.4 Science Reading Room that " we " do not copy JYirs. Eddy's writings, because " we " might inadvertently omit or change a word and thereby change the meaning of the text. Then~ "we" would be purporting to be giving Mrs. Eddy's words when actually "we" would not. Fortunately for the purpose of this paper, the Christian Scientists of St. Louis had donated to the public library copies of their official textbooks, and the public library has not undertaken to enforce the prohibition against copying. 3 Article II, section 1, of the Church By-Laws reads as follows: "The Readers for the Mother Church shall be a ~an and a woman, one to read the BIBLE and one to, read SciENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE ScRIPTUREs." Section 2: " lit shall be the duty of the First Readers to conduct the principal part of the Sunday services, and the Wednesday evening meetings." Section 4: "The First Readers in the Christian Science churches shall read the correlative texts in SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE ScRIPTURES: and the Second Readers shall read the BmLE texts. The reading from the ScRIPTURES shall precede the readings from SciENCE~ AND HEALTH. The Readers shall not read from copies or manuscripts, but from the...