Christian Scientists who read with gratitude the announcement by The Christian Science Board of Directors in this issue may be interested to note the following excerpt from a statement by this Board in the Sentinel of January 21, 1928. It stresses the fact that no written words of Mrs. Eddy's that have become the property of The Mother Church have ever been destroyed by the Board, but that they are being carefully mounted and indexed "so that they may always be preserved and may be available for reference by the Directors and their successors in office, to enlighten and guide them in the innumerable problems confronting the Cause, and that they may be used in any other way which from time to time may be determined through prayerful consideration by the Board of Directors."
Since that time brief excerpts from these letters have on occasion been published, in the historical articles by the Editor of the Bureau of History and Records as they appeared in The Christian Science Journal; and, we dare say also, in some of the statements from the Directors which are printed in the Christian Science periodicals; perhaps elsewhere. Further, in 1930, when the Rev. Lyman P. Powell was writing his biography of Mrs. Eddy, which The Christian Science Publishing Society decided to furnish to the Field, many fitting excerpts from Mrs. Eddy's letters, not before published, were used by him with the consent of the owners in the literary rights, that is, the Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, and with the approval of the Directors of The Mother Church.
It is well known that Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 456) that this book "is the voice of Truth to this age, and contains the full statement of Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind;" also, that in the Church Manual by Mrs. Eddy there is a requirement that the applicant, to be admitted to membership in The Mother Church, must fulfill this rule (Art. IV, Sect. 1): "The Bible, together with Science and Health and other works by Mrs. Eddy, shall be his only textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science, and for teaching and practising metaphysical healing."
