THE privilege of reading in a Christian Science church is a sacred one, for this is an important means by which the truth goes forth from the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, to heal and regenerate the human consciousness. Therefore, the selection of those persons best prepared to serve as Readers should be preceded by prayerful consideration on the part of each member of a branch church. Each member should guard against being influenced by human advice. Our Leader makes it clear that Readers should be spiritually-minded, consecrated students, exemplary Christians, well educated, and able to read understandingly.
While Mrs. Eddy specifically provides that the Readers in The Mother Church shall be a man and a woman, she carefully corrects the mistaken belief that a First Reader should necessarily be a man and the Second Reader a woman. She considered the correction important enough to include it in her written works as follows: "The report that I prefer to have a man, rather than a woman, for First Reader in The Church of Christ, Scientist, I desire to correct. My preference lies with the individual best fitted to perform this important function. If both the First and Second Readers are my students, then without reference to sex I should prefer that student who is most spiritually-minded. What our churches need is that devout, unselfed quality of thought which spiritualizes the congregation" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 249).
In specifying spirituality as the all-important qualification for the Readership, Mrs. Eddy lifts the function of this high office from the realm of the human to the divine. Spirituality is a divine quality of thought, which emanates from Truth and is unobstructed and uncontaminated by material sense. It is the pure, unselfed thought which elevates accomplishment from the level of a personal achievement to the evidence of divine activity; it is the humble, Christlike spirit which deflates self to serve God, the spiritual conviction of Truth which overwhelms human inadequacies with divine abilities.
