Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. As a reader of this magazine, you are most likely already familiar with this book. You may have owned the book for some time, or even if you haven't had it for long, do you remember how you first got the book?
Perhaps the book was given to you by a friend, or you borrowed it from the library. Maybe you've owned it all of your life. Some unusual first encounters include finding it at a flea market on a book bargain table and in the waiting room of an auto repair shop.
Science and Health is a book that has had a tremendous effect on a lot of people— nearly nine million people according to sales figures. Over its 119-year publishing history it has been distributed by door-to-door salesmen, lent by public and private libraries, sold in bookstores and Christian Science Reading Rooms; has been published in cloth, leather, and paperback print bindings in seventeen languages and English Braille; and has been produced on audio records, cassettes, compact discs, and electronic media. All of these efforts have increased the availability and accessibility of the book.
Right now some interesting developments are taking place in book publishing. Perhaps you've noticed the trends in thought questioning current conventions regarding health care, medicine, healing, prayer. And many books have been published in the past year in the United States that challenge traditional, material-based thinking. These books are receiving serious consideration by the reading public and indicate in a modest way what Mrs. Eddy says in Miscellaneous Writings when she states boldly, "This age is reaching out towards the perfect Principle of things ..." (p. 232.)
This kind of spiritual searching, together with other indicators, suggests that the opportunity to distribute Science and Health through bookstores is again a present possibility. Bookstore distribution isn't a new idea for the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. Science and Health was sold in bookstores during Mrs. Eddy's lifetime, even after Christian Science Reading Rooms were established. It was also available for a time through the Sears, Roebuck catalog.
Many recent activities are showing an increase in Science and Health's accessibility. Individuals and branch churches have been inquiring about how to approach bookstore managers regarding stocking Science and Health. Some Reading Rooms, in conjunction with permission from the Publisher, are advertising Science and Health in local papers. Branch churches, together with their Assistant Committees on Publication, are again placing Science and Health in libraries. In addition, during the past three years the Publisher's Office has been taking steps in the United States to make Science and Health more widely available to bookstores.
Next month, a paperback edition of Science and Health will be made available, replacing the current brightly colored ... paperback. It is designed with the first-time reader in thought. It will include a word index, Publisher's Note, and offer modest refinements in the page design. The word index gives the first-time reader a tool for accessing the author's text since he or she may not have a Concordance. The one-page Publisher's Note welcomes today's reader to this timeless message of healing.
To those who are familiar with the book's content, the page layout will look a little different—the marginal headings will be located in the left margin. This adjustment reflects Mrs. Eddy's original desire to have the marginal headings appear separate from the body of the text. She almost always referred to them as "side notes" and consented to her assistant's recommendation that they be imbedded in the text because he felt it was more aesthetically pleasing and to accommodate the manufacturing technology of the day. Today those technology limitations no longer exist. The text, of course, remains the same and is set line-for-line according to the other editions of Science and Health. Line numbers will appear in the right margin.
At the American Booksellers Association in May 1994 the book industry was reintroduced ... to this bestseller. We shared advance information about the September publication date of this Science and Health edition. Key cities in the United States have been selected to focus a special awareness about the book's availability.
Branch churches throughout the United States can support this effort by sponsoring Christian Science lectures about Science and Health this autumn, creating Reading Room window displays featuring this edition, advertising in local newspapers, placing Science and Health in area libraries, and contacting bookstore managements about stocking Science and Health. (If you'd like to know of other ideas or would like to participate in these and other activities, please feel free to contact the Publisher's Office.)
Along with these ideas, continued sharing of the textbook with friends, acquaintances, business associates—individuals who are searching for the light and hope this book offers—is essential to increasing the book's availability. It is the life lived by the students of this book, the love and care they express for humanity, that is Science and Health's most effective endorsement. All our collective efforts serve to aid in the fulfillment of our Leader's vision of this great book's mission.
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. ...
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall
they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Mark 16:15, 17,18
