When the first issue of The Christian Science Monitor was given to Mary Baker Eddy on the dark and foggy day of November 25, 1908, she told those present: “This, in truth, is the lightest of all days. This is the day when our daily paper goes forth to lighten mankind” (Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, p. 312).
Over 100 years later, the Monitor in both its weekly and online forms is still doing its work to “lighten mankind.” To read about Mrs. Eddy’s determination to have the newspaper—and to identify it with Christian Science—is to realize that the paper is not just a distant relative of the The Christian Science Journal, the Christian Science Sentinel, and The Herald of Christian Science. She was thinking of the Monitor as an essential part of the redemption of humanity, including Christian Scientists, from sin, sickness, and death.
I myself have felt its redemptive power. When I was just a teenager, I was waiting for a teacher in the high school’s history department. Like all kids, I was alert for any unguarded comment a teacher might make. I heard one of them speak in a positive way about The Christian Science Monitor. At the time I didn’t even know it was a newspaper or what “Christian Science” was. But the remark—and the name—stuck with me as a positive memory.
