The rapid spread of Christian Science ideas and the substantial growth of the Christian Science movement is unquestionably one of the most significant phenomena of our times. The basic ideas of Christian Science pervade the atmosphere of religious and philosophic thought, and the movement is already organized in all the leading towns and cities of the United States and in the principal centres of Europe. Christian Science also has a hearing in the Philippine Islands, in the Hawaiian islands, and within the walls of China. In fact, Christian Science is one of the most prosperous movements of our time, and it is rapidly spreading over the whole world.
During the past few years, a number of magnificent Christian Science Churches have been completed, and there are many more in the process of construction. The movement has a board of lecturers, who are being heard by large audiences in all parts of the United States and Canada. It also has an official monthly organ, The Christian Science Journal, and a weekly publication, the Christian Science Sentinel. Both of these have a very large circulation, and are going into all parts of the world. The text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, has passed its two hundredth edition; and there is, perhaps, no other writer on religious subjects whose writings are so extensively circulated and so faithfully and profoundly studied as those of Mrs. Eddy.
Christian Science has an official church membership of twenty-five thousand, and this is only a small percentage of those who are in substantial agreement with its fundamental teachings. Mrs. Eddy, in her last annual message to the Mother Church in Boston, said, "Judging from the number of the readers of my books and those interested in them, over a million people are already interested in Christian Science." The religious statistics for 1899 show that the annual increase of Christian Scientists for that year was sixteen per cent, while the other Protestant churches had scarcely held their own,—the number of Theosophists and Spiritualists had actually decreased. The movement includes within its ranks eminent lawyers, jurists, clergymen, teachers, doctors, actors, and successful business men; and it has been accepted by some of the nobility of Europe.
