The excerpts that follow are from one chapter of a new book, The Bible and Bibles in America, edited by Ernest S. Frerichs and published by Scholars Press and Fortress Press. This book is the first volume of a scholarly series entitled The Bible in American Culture, sponsored by the Society of Biblical Literature. Robert Peel, as an author of several books on Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science, was asked to contribute a chapter on Science and Health, with emphasis on its publishing history and public reception. Most readers of the Journal are already familiar with the tremendous spiritual contribution the Christian Science textbook has made to our age but are not so familiar with the misunderstanding and controversy it encountered when it first broke on the world. The following brief excerpt from Mr. Peel's chapter throws light on this less-known aspect of the textbook's history. The October Journal will carry a further excerpt dealing with different aspects of that history.
I n 1875 a privately printed book by a little-known writer, Mary Baker Glover, then in her middle fifties, appeared in Boston in a modest edition of one thousand copies. The book, Science and Health, undistinguished in appearance though challenging in content, attracted little immediate attention. Three years later the first edition was still not exhausted.
In another ten years, however, when the book had been revised several times and its title expanded to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, its author (now Mary Baker Eddy) was arousing widespread public interest as the leader of a striking new religious movement, and the sales of the book had mounted to some thirty-eight thousand copies. By the time of her death in 1910, the number of copies sold or distributed was well on the way toward the million mark, and a German translation was being prepared as the first of many others to follow.
