and substituted Readers, she 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 by no
means 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," by the mere sound of his voice, it
would seem, so influential that Mrs. Eddy felt the necessity to limit
still further the Reader's power. Of course she could have dismissed
Mr. Hanna, but he was far too useful to be dispensed with. So Mrs.
Eddy made a new ruling that the Reader's term of office should be
limited to three years,[7] and, Mr. Hanna's term then being up, he was
put into the lecture field. Now the highest dignity that any Christian
Scientist could hope for was to be chosen to read "Science and Health"
aloud for three years at a comfortable salary.

_Why the Readers Obeyed_

Why, it has often been asked, did the more influential pastors--people
with a large personal following, like Mrs. Stetson--consent to resign
their pulpits in the first place and afterward to be stripped of
privilege after privilege? Some of them, of course, submitted because
they believed that Mrs. Eddy possessed "Divine Wisdom"; others because
they remembered what had happened to dissenters aforetime. Of all
those who had broken away from Mrs. Eddy's authority, not one had
attained to anything like her obvious success or material prosperity,
while many had followed wandering fires and had come to nothing.
Christian Science leaders had staked their fortunes upon the
hypothesis that Mrs. Eddy possessed "divine wisdom"; it was as
expounders of this wisdom that they had obtained their influence and
built up their churches. To rebel against the authority of Mrs. Eddy's