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.

ELECTION OF READERS

Readers are not taken at hap-hazard, any more than preachers are taken
at hap-hazard for the pulpits of other sects. No, Readers are elected by
the Board of Directors. Bu