Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

I discovered immediately that I was in for a pleasant surprise. “I had read quite a little about Mary Baker Eddy but I had never, strangely enough, gone to the book itself. Some eighty-two years later, novelist Henry Miller made this observation about Science and Health in his memoir Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch: And my joy is heightened the more when I find the blessed words are of woman’s divinings.” In times like ours, so sunk in sensualism, I hail with joy any voice speaking an assured word for God and Immortality. “The sacred truths which you announce, sustained by facts of the Immortal Life give to your work the seal of inspiration-reaffirm in modern phrase the Christian revelations.

When the book was first published, philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott wrote the author as follows: It is well known as the foundational guidance for the Church of Christ, Scientist, but more than this it is a work that charts, in the words of Amy Voorhees, “a singular expression of Christianity with a restorationist, revelatory, healing rationale.” Its theological deviations from orthodox Christian doctrine sometimes have been met with derision, especially among fundamentalist Christians, but others have recognized Science and Health as a freshly pragmatic response to the living word of the Bible. Many sources overlook the importance of this book in its finalized form. It has sold in the millions and was included by the Women’s National Book Association on its list of 75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed the World. Eddy first self-published the book, then entitled only Science and Health, in 1875. It was revised over the last several decades of her life, reaching its final form in 1910, shortly before her death that year. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a book written by Mary Baker Eddy which, together with the Christian Bible, is integral to Christian Science worship and practice.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy