Article October 14, 1911 Issue

GUARDING OUR LITERATURE

S. BELLE GORHAM.

Truly the greatest gift that has come to this age is the Christian Science text-book, which elucidates so clearly and accurately the teachings and practice of the Master. It sets aside all the rubbish of human opinion and speculation which have so long obscured our vision of Truth, and it has again made plain the straight and narrow way. This priceless gift, the healing truth contained in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mrs. Eddy, is God's gift to humanity throughout the ages to come.

Those who today have accepted this gift are bearing witness to the blessings which it is daily bringing to them, and perhaps nothing gives them greater happiness than the opportunity to bear this message to others are ready for it. We might say, then, that each one who receives the message of Truth, as our Leader has presented it to us, receives it not only for himself, but in trust for all who may afterward come to him for it, and he is to this extent its guardian. According to Webster, a guardian is "one who guards, preserves, or secures; one to whom any ... thing is committed for protection, security, or preservation." We know that nothing can ever injure the truth, for it is indestructible; but the purport of its message to humanity became obscured, long ago, through adulteration and carelessness in the copying of manuscripts, and a similar tendency today cannot help to preserve it for this generation and for generations to come.

Each of us to whom the message of Truth comes through our Leader's works, or through any of our carefully edited periodicals (the channels provided by our Leader), should guard it most sacredly, and to those who are ready for it we should give it in its purity and entirety, and not through fragments copied, whether correctly or incorrectly, from these sources. We ourselves should never be satisfied with less than the original, and we should give nothing less to others. "But," many have said to the writer, "I have just copied a paragraph for my own use, so that I may take it with me to study while I am riding on the car." Inaccuracy is a tendency which cannot be guarded against too carefully, and the surest way to avoid it in connection with our authorized literature is to keep to the original always. If we are willing to study it from copies, we can never be sure that we are giving it to others with absolute correctness, for that with which we fill our own mental storehouse will be that which we will have to give to others. If our mental storehouse is filled with unadulterated truth, we shall have only pure and unadulterated truth to give to others. Shakespeare says,—

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