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."

But the call of spiritual understanding does not leave the subject at this point. It demands still deeper metaphysical interpretation before full justice can be done to this momentous theme. Since the Bible may be described as standing for Christ Jesus, the Old Testament foretelling his appearance and the New Testament setting forth his words and works, it is permissible to speak of the two witnesses as Christ Jesus and Christian Science. Moreover, since the revelation of Christian Science came by a woman, it follows necessarily that while the first witness expressed manhood, the second witness must be associated with womanhood.

This is evidently the meaning of the revelator's vision of "a woman clothed with the sun." The spiritual idea, or the Christ, Truth, which appeared to human apprehension first as man, in the second and last instance is represented by woman. In this connection it is impressive to read the bylaw (Art. II, Sect. 1) of the Manual of The Mother Church, written by Mrs. Eddy: "The Readers for The Mother Church shall be a man and a woman, one to read the Bible, and one to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." A study of the illustration entitled "Christian Unity" in Mrs. Eddy's "Christ and Christmas" further elucidates the subject of the two witnesses.

In explaining to questioners what she meant by her successor, Mrs. Eddy was led to place before the world a most profound statement about the two witnesses, which is to be found on pages 346 and 347 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." "Science and Health," she writes, "makes it plain to all Christian Scientists that the manhood and womanhood of God have already been revealed in a degree through Christ Jesus and Christian Science, His two witnesses."

William D. McCrackan.

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Lecture in The Mother Church

February 17, 1917

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