them were made Readers in the churches which they had built and in which they had formerly preached.
The "Reader" is well hedged in with by-laws and his duties and limitations are clearly defined:
He is to read parts of Science and Health aloud at every service.
He cannot read from a manuscript or from a transcribed copy, but must read from the book itself.
He is, Mrs. Eddy says, to be "well read and well educated," but he shall at no time make any remarks explanatory of the passages which he reads.
Before commencing to read from Mrs. Eddy's book "he shall distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name."
A Reader must not be a leader in the church. Besides these restrictions there is a by-law which provides that Mrs. Eddy can, without explanation, remove any reader at any time that she sees fit to do so.[1]
In the same number of the Journal in which she dismissed her pastors and substituted Readers, Mrs. Eddy stated, in an open letter, that her students would find in that issue "the completion, as I now think, of the Divine directions sent out to the churches." But it was not the completion. By the summer of 1902 Septimus J. Hanna, First Reader of the Mother Church in Boston, had become, without the liberty to preach or to "make remarks," so influential that Mrs. Eddy made a new ruling that the Reader's term of office should be limited
- ↑ For the text of these by-laws see Christian Science Manual (1904), Articles IV and XXIII.
