Dear Friend—
The Journal’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, once stated her life-mission this way: “The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs. . .” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 226). “It was for them,” a biographer (of another faith) concluded, that Mrs. Eddy “began in 1883 to publish The Christian Science Journal, in 1898 the Christian Science Sentinel, and in 1908 The Christian Science Monitor. Monthly, weekly, daily, she would have the members of her church read what she was convinced would make them immune to error” (Lyman P. Powell, Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait, p. 204).1
Magazines and newspapers—in any form or format—typically offer news and opinion, and sometimes enlightenment. But publications that have the capacity to make readers “immune to error”—to enable them to heal and be healed? Now that’s a different story. And yet, this periodical and the others named above have been doing that for over a century. None of them is merely a holding place for happy stories or current affairs. They, in fact, evoke changes of thought and transformation of experience, emitting spiritual power and light, chronicling divine truth and proof of progress, health, freedom, purpose, and protection—even immunity to error.
