full resource of disciplined power getting free from them by removing
the causes which create them, is to cheat ourselves with words, lose
ourselves in shadows which we mistake for light and even if in some
regions we seem to succeed it is only at the cost of what is more bitter
than pain and more deadly than wounds--the loss of mental and spiritual
integrity. This is a price too great to pay for any mere healing.

VI

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AS A THEOLOGY

"Science and Health" is offered, among other things, as a key to the
Scriptures, and along with her interpretation of both the Old and the
New Testaments in terms of her peculiar philosophy Mrs. Eddy rewrites
the great articles of the Christian creeds. A careful student of Mrs.
Eddy's mental processes is able in this region to understand them better
than she understood them herself. She had, to begin with, an inherited
reverence for the Bible as an authority for life and she shared with
multitudes of others a difficulty to which reference has already been
more than once made. For what one may call the typical Protestant
consciousness the Bible is the final revelation of God, governing, if
only we can come to understand it, both our faith and our conduct of
life, but the want of a true understanding of it and, above all, the
burdening of it with an inherited tradition has clouded its light for
multitudes of devout souls.

_Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures_

Such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any
interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an
intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its
contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of
life. Any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself
the authority of the Bible has obtained directly an immense
reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and Mrs.
Eddy has taken full advantage of this. Her book is veined with Scripture
references; two of her chapters are expositions of Biblical books
(Genesis and Revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines
of the Church.

_It Ignores All Recognized Canons of Biblical Interpretation.
Illustrations_

Mrs. Eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the
covers of the Scriptures. Beyond debate her teachings have carried much
farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a
Scriptural