Today there is more news to consume and less time in which to consume it than perhaps ever before in human history. It may feel overwhelming to take time each day to discern what needs healing and devote prayerful attention to those issues.
But Mary Baker Eddy, who established The Christian Science Monitor, an international news publication, under the auspices of her worldwide church, offers a potent antidote to this sense of burden. In the Manual of The Mother Church, she includes this By-Law: “It shall be the privilege and duty of every member, who can afford it, to subscribe for the periodicals which are the organs of this Church; and it shall be the duty of the Directors to see that these periodicals are ably edited and kept abreast of the times” (p. 44).
Is the Monitor one of those periodicals? Although it is not mentioned anywhere in the Manual, it is noteworthy that it is mentioned in Mrs. Eddy’s editorial in the first edition of The Christian Science Monitor, where she says, “I have given the name to all the Christian Science periodicals.” And after giving the name and purpose of the other three periodicals, she says, “the next I named Monitor, to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent. The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” (“Something in a Name,” The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353).
