THE publication of a new book from the pen of the author of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is an event of world wide interest. There is probably no book published in this day, nor any book in the past save one of Mrs. Eddy's, for which so large an advance sale has been recorded. These things bespeak a wide spread awakening to spiritual desires and attainment under the leadership of this great woman. Under the title, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," the new book records the events of Mary Baker Eddy's career at its culmination. It was compiled before the pen of the writer was laid aside three years ago, but its publication waited the adjustment of her estate. Like "Miscellaneous Writings," published in 1896, the volume collects many short articles, letters, items, and notices, certain dedicatory addresses not long enough to be published as separate books, together with comments of the press on the building and dedication of the extension of The Mother Church building in 1906, and Mrs. Eddy's contributions to current periodicals.
The dedicatory sermon of 1906 opens the book with its arresting title, "Choose ye." All through this address mention of the golden rule runs indeed like a shining thread. The author says: "The First Commandment of the Hebrew Decalogue, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' and the golden rule are the all in all of Christian Science" (p. 5) One is reminded again and again in the volume, by citations of this law of Jesus, that the deep impulse of Mrs. Eddy's life was loving service of her neighbor, and that she included every human being in this endearing relationship. Throughout the book the demands upon herself and upon her followers for what she has elsewhere called "unselfed love" (Science and Health, p. 1) are too numerous to be quoted. One of the most notable and characteristic of these sayings is found in the sermon that dedicated the church which Mrs. Eddy herself built in Concord, N. H., the city which was so long her home. She says: "The heart that beats mostly for self is seldom alight with love. To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science" (p. 16)
From the address of welcome into The Mother Church extension,—the great dome, or house, home,—with hospitality for five thousand hearers, to the editorial published in the first number of The Christian Science Monitor, this book of reprints seems peculiarly to express Mrs. Eddy's conviction of her world mission, even as it shows the world's growing acknowledgment of her beneficent activities. She knew that all humanity was hungering and thirsting for a better knowledge of God, for a working Christianity that would lift the shadows of sin, sickness, and death which seem to darken His designs; and so she gave herself to the task of putting a practical Christianity again within the reach of the people. Courageously, with her great heart indeed "unutterable in love" (p. 134), she tells mankind in this book that she has never been their harsh critic or in any sense an opponent. She says: "A genuine Christian Scientist loves Protestant and Catholic, D.D. and M.D.,—loves all who love God, good; and he loves his enemies" (p. 4). Writing to the Monitor for the first issue, Nov. 25, 1908, she said: "The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind" (p. 353).
