LONG training in a literal and material interpretation of the Scriptures tends to unfit one to understand them spiritually. A hard and harsh literalness blots out the divine compassion inherent in the Bible and renders the student oblivious of its saving message. Words are interpreters of ideas, but if there is no idealism, there is at best only a barren interpretation of words.
Mrs. Eddy, the author of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," found a public but imperfectly trained to understand metaphysical ideas, and therefore experienced difficulty in conveying her meaning through mere words. That she succeeded as well as she did in making healing and saving ideas comprehensible to humanity must be accounted a wonderful achievement. Today all who sincerely desire to follow the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures can do so by studying the Bible in conjunction with her works.
It cannot be gainsaid that Christian Science is promoting a veritable revival of Bible study. Never has there been so much systematic searching of the Scriptures, not in the interests of fanciful scholarship or of so-called higher criticism, nor in behalf of mere doctrine or dogma, but with the avowed purpose of extracting practical lessons from such study. The Christian Science Lesson-Sermon, consisting of "scriptural texts, and their correlative passages from our denominational text-book" (Quarterly, p. 4), is studied daily by hundreds of thousands of persons who are learning thereby to avail themselves of limitless spiritual treasure. This could not have taken place had they persisted in the hopeless literalness of interpretation which was largely current before the discovery of Christian Science.
