Doubtless many Christian Science practitioners and teachers in Christian Science Sunday Schools have been asked, by patients and pupils, what Mrs. Eddy meant by certain passages in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" or in her other books. All too often, if one is not alert, the tendency might be to give one's own merely human interpretation of her words.
In the Sunday services in Christian Science churches the reading of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly is preceded by the "Explanatory Note" (p. ii), wherein it is stated that the citations from the Bible and the Christian Science textbook "constitute a sermon undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized." The Manual expressly states that Readers shall make no explanatory remarks regarding the Lesson-Sermon.
We know that the revelation of Christian Science came to Mrs. Eddy by divine inspiration, and that she was divinely guided and inspired in the elucidation of her revelation. We cannot add to or take from it; and we should exercise great care in seeing that whatever we may say in regard to it is in accord with what she has written. Often the best answer to a question is to turn the questioner to some further statement of our Leader's, or encourage him to search out the answer for himself in her writings.
