In the 1920s my grandmother was given a book that was to change her life. She had lost her husband in the Great War, and she had two children to bring up on her own with very little money. Those were extremely hard times and often she didn’t know how she would make ends meet. The headmistress of my mother’s school was touched by my grandmother’s plight and knew that Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings, explained in Science and Health, could change her life for the better. And so they did—so much so that my grandmother was even able to help others, sometimes dramatically, with the ideas she shared from that book. Tried and tested in our family now for nearly 100 years, the ideas in this book have helped each generation in every possible circumstance. Sickness, sometimes severe, has been healed, fear removed, broken relationships mended. It has provided consolation, encouragement, inspiration, direction. Way ahead of its time, Science and Health has made the timeless teachings of the Bible become vital and relevant and oh so practical to my family in the twenty-first century.
Pantymwyn, Wales
I literally owe my life to the scientific Christianity Mary Baker Eddy discovered in the pages of her Bible and dedicated her life to sharing. When I was a baby, I survived what seemed to be life-threatening suffocation after I had stopped breathing and lost the color in my face. I was revived through Christian Science treatment—that is, prayer based on “an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love” (Science and Health, p. 1). She is one of the world’s greatest benefactors.
Palo Alto, California, US
Mary Baker Eddy is a lifesaver to me. Her painstaking efforts to discover Christian Science and articulate it in Science and Health enabled my mother to heal me of a head injury, and later brought about my healings of life-threatening pneumonia and of a large breast lump through my own prayers.
Saint Germain en Laye, France
Mary Baker Eddy’s take on the true nature of science and religion were ahead of her time, and are still ahead of the world’s thought on these questions today. The recognition that Christianity is scientific and that there are laws of God that govern heaven here and now is revolutionary. What a discovery! What a discoverer!
Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England
People would be interested in Mary Baker Eddy because of her outstanding record of healing; because of her willingness to challenge all the major trains of thought in science, theology, and medicine of the 19th century; because she is an outstanding example to all women of the achievement that the feminine mind can reach in a dominant man’s world; because at an age when most people are going into retirement, Mrs. Eddy was branching out into new territories—founding a church, magazines, and, finally, a newspaper; because she was considered one of the most well-known women of her generation; because her book Science and Health has been a bestseller for its publisher for over a hundred years; because scientists of today are recognizing more and more the mental nature of life; because the religion she founded is being practiced in so many countries throughout the world; because of the impact her teaching has had on the mind, body, spirit movement; and because some medical professionals are openly recognizing that medicine is not a science, while Christian Science healing can be scientifically demonstrated.
Barnstaple, Devon, England
I like Mary Baker Eddy’s lifelong search for truth. She always wanted to get to the bottom of things—for example, to the reason why she had had a regenerative healing after reading the Bible, when everyone was expecting her to pass away. After 45 years of writing, teaching the principles of spiritual healing, founding an international newspaper, she still had this sense of humility about how much more there remained to learn about Christian discipleship, or as she put it, “To-day, though rejoicing in some progress, she still finds herself a willing disciple at the heavenly gate, waiting for the Mind of Christ” (Science and Health, p. ix).
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
