SOURCE: "Christian Science," in Religion in the Twentieth Century, edited by Vergillius Ferm, The Philosophical Library, 1948, pp. 357-78.

In the following essay, Todd provides an overview of Christian Science and of the principal tenets of Eddy's writings.

Christian Science is the system of religious thought and the denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 as the outcome of her discovery of this religious truth at Swampscott, Massachusetts, in 1866, and her publication of the first edition of its basic textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in 1875. From childhood Mrs. Eddy had been deeply religious and a profound student of the Bible, and had long been inclined to attribute all causation to God, and to regard Him as infinitely good, and the Soul and source of all reality. But in 1866 a lifetime of ill-health was climaxed by what was regarded as a fatal injury from which she...