Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

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Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a book written by Mary Baker Eddy^[1] which, together with the Christian Bible, is integral to Christian Science worship and practice. It was revised over the last several decades of her life, reaching its final form in 1910, shortly before her death that year. Eddy first self-published the book, then entitled only Science and Health, in 1875. 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.[1] Many sources overlook the importance of this book in its finalized form. 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.”^[2] 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. When the book was first published, philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott wrote the author as follows:

“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. In times like ours, so sunk in sensualism, I hail with joy any voice speaking an assured word for God and Immortality. And my joy is heightened the more when I find the blessed words are of woman’s divinings.”^[3]

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:

“I had read quite a little about Mary Baker Eddy but I had never, strangely enough, gone to the book itself. I discovered immediately that I was in for a pleasant surprise. Mary Baker Eddy became very real to me. My critical opinion of her fell away. I saw her as the great soul she was, human, yes, human to the core, but filled with a great light, transformed by a revelation such as might occur to any of us were we big enough and open enough to receive it.”^[4]

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