priating them, and so avoiding the cost of hiring or purchasing?
Copying my published works verbatim, compiling them in connection with the Scriptures, taking this copy into the pulpit, announcing the author's name, then reading it publicly as your own compilation, is — what?
We answer, It is a mistake; in common parlance, it is an ignorant wrong.
If you should print and publish your copy of my works, you would be liable to arrest for infringement of copyright, which the law defines and punishes as theft. Reading in the pulpit from copies of my publications gives you the clergyman's salary and spares you the printer's bill, but does it spare you our Master's condemnation? You literally publish my works through the pulpit, instead of the press, and thus evade the law, but not the gospel. When I consent to this act, you will then be justified in it.
Your manuscript copy is liable, in some way, to be printed as your original writings, thus incurring the penalty of the law, and increasing the record of theft in the United States Circuit Court.
To The Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, which I had organized and of which I had for many years been pastor, I gave permission to cite, in the Christian Science Quarterly, from my work Science and Health, passages giving the spiritual meaning of Bible texts; but this was a special privilege, and the author's gift.
Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays whatever he is able to pay for being healed, is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health. Healing morally and physically are one.
