At the Sunday service in all Churches of Christ, Scientist, a two-paragraph explanation is read by the First Reader immediately before he or she announces the subject of that week's Lesson-Sermon. This Explanatory Note, included in each edition of the Christian Science Quarterly and written by Mary Baker Eddy, begins, "The Bible and the Christian Science textbook are our only preachers." And it concludes, "The canonical writings, together with the word of our textbook, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized."Quarterly, p. 2 .
Why can it be said that these sermons are "divinely authorized"? The origin of the books from which the sermons are drawn is one reason. Another is the manner in which the Bible, and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, were chosen as the only preachers of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The Scriptures present the very Word of God. The Word has been described as the self-revealing activity of God. This self-revealing activity was further manifested to humanity in the latter part of the nineteenth century through the revelation that came to Mrs. Eddy as she pored over the Scriptures. She writes regarding her Biblical research to understand the laws of spiritual healing, "The revelation of Truth in the understanding came to me gradually and apparently through divine power."Science and Health,p. 109. She has described herself as one who simply indited the messages given her by God. Science and Health is the record of this revelation.
