The sacred writings which constitute the Bible are referred to in the first tenet of Christian Science, where the Discoverer and Founder of this Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 497). Even the inspired Scriptures, however, contain but a relatively brief introduction to that perpetual revelation of God's Word to man which St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, calls "the epistle of Christ." The healing and regenerating power of the inspired Word of the Bible, as felt by the ancient patriarchs, as proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets, as recorded by the four evangelists, and as demonstrated by Christ Jesus and his true followers, had almost ceased to be appreciable to modern religionists when Mary Baker Eddy discovered the divine Principle which revitalizes the letter of Truth, and which, when understood, destroys the physical ills to which mortals are supposed to be heir.
St. Paul saw that "the epistle of Christ" is an unending correspondence between God and man which as far as humanity is concerned, is being "written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (II Cor. 3:3).
Mrs. Eddy gives her own immortal estimate of the Messianic mission in her Communion Address to The Mother Church in January, 1896, in these words (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 120): "The Biblical record of the great Nazarene, whose character we to-day commemorate, is scanty; but what is given, puts to flight every doubt as to the immortality of his words and works. Though written in a decaying language, his words can never pass away: they are inscribed upon the hearts of men: they are engraved upon eternity's tablets."
