The rapid expansion of knowledge in recent times, particularly in the physical sciences, and the succession of hypotheses overtaking and correcting one another have led to a widespread feeling that no conclusions can be more than provisional. Perhaps the supersession of Newton's scheme of the universe, accepted for two centuries as ascertained truth, by a different scheme known as relativity has, more than anything else, made popular the belief that all truth is relative.
A similar, if less dramatic, erosion of certainty has come about in the fields of history and religion. In fact, it is now generally assumed among scholars that the best that even the most brilliant among them can aspire to is to establish some hypothesis that more or less satisfactorily explains the facts known at the present day but is bound to give place, as knowledge advances, to some new hypothesis that provides a better explanation. In such an intellectual climate how can any exposition be regarded as final?
It is therefore startling to come upon the claim made by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that her discovery of Christian Science is a "final revelation." She writes of this discovery, "God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing."Science and Health, p. 107;
