Editorial February 17, 1917 Issue

The Two Witnesses

William D. McCrackan

The explanatory note to be found in The Christian Science Quarterly contains the phrase, "The Bible and the Christian Science text-book are our only preachers." On the cover of this same Quarterly an artist has drawn, in the conventional lines of a pattern, two olive branches or trees, associated with lamps of oil. Are the Bible and Science and Health the two olive trees or branches of Zechariah's vision, "which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves ... the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth"? Are they the revelator's "two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth," described in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse? If this interpretation be accepted by Christian Scientists, then it becomes apparent to them that Christian unity and continuity is dependent upon an unbroken connection being maintained between these two preachers.

When the Puritan Pilgrims reached the shores of the American continent, they brought with them the first of these witnesses or preachers; and the second arose from their very midst, through the revelation of Truth which came to a daughter of their own people,—to Mary Baker Eddy. The Bible which they brought with them had first been completely translated into the English of his day by one Wyclif in the year 1380, about one hundred and fifty years before Luther's translation made its appearance. It is spiritually significant that this same Wyclif used the very words, science and health, which as the title of Mrs. Eddy's epoch-making book were destined to circle the earth in the fulfilment of prophecy, and so to stand for the second great witness or preacher in the complete scheme of Christian salvation.

It is obvious, then, that any estrangement between the state founded by the Puritan Pilgrims and the land of their origin, would have religious as well as political significance. Equally clear must it be to the working Christian Scientist that any attempt to interfere with the orderly expansion around the globe of the English language, in which the revelation of Christian Science was set down for humanity's acceptance, must emanate from the desire to break the continuity of Christian endeavor which reaches from Wyclif to Mrs. Eddy, and so to sever the link between the Bible and Science and Health, the two preachers, the witnesses of God's choosing. "What ... God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

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