________________________________________________
_ These are a feature of first importance in the church-machinery of
Christian Science. For they occupy the pulpit. They hold the place that
the preacher holds in the other Christian Churches. They hold that
place, but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty at a time--a man
and a woman. One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads the
explanation of it from Science and Health--and so they go on alternating.
This constitutes the service--this, with choir-music. They utter no word
of their own. Art. IV., Sec. 6, closes their mouths with this
uncompromising gag:
"They shall make no remarks explanatory of the Lesson-Sermon at any time
during the service."
It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled by it at a first
reading of it; nor at the second, nor the third. One may have to read it
a dozen times before the whole magnitude of it rises before the mind. It
far and away oversizes and outclasses the best business-idea yet invented
for the safe-guarding and perpetuating of a religion. If it had been
thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and seventy years ago, there
would be but one Christian sect in the world now, instead of ten dozens
of them.
There are many varieties of men in the world, consequently there are many
varieties of minds in its pulpits. This insures many differing
interpretations of important Scripture texts, and this in turn insures
the splitting up of a religion into many sects. It is what has happened;
it was sure to happen.
Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of preaching, and has put up
the bars. She will have no preaching in her Church. She has explained
all essential Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book. In
her belief her underlings cannot improve upon those explanations, and in
that stern sentence "they shall make no explanatory remarks" she has
barred them for all time from trying. She will be obeyed; there is no
question about that.
In arranging her government she has borrowed ideas from various sources--
not poor ones, but the best in the governmental market--but this one is
new, this one came out of no ordinary business-head, this one must have
come out of her own, there has been no other commercial skull in a
thousand centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed freely and
wisely, but I am sure that this idea is many times larger than all her
borrowings bulked together. One must respect the business-brain that
produced it--the splendid pluck and impudence that ventured to promulgate
it, anyway. _
Read next: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI - SELECTION OF READERS
Read previous: BOOK II: CHAPTER VI - BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Table of content of Christian Science
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
