FIRST PUBLICATION

In 1870 I copyrighted the first publication on spiritual, scientific Mind-healing, entitled “The Science of Man.”  This little book is converted into the chapter on Recapitulation in Science and Health.  It was so new—­the basis it laid down for physical and moral health was so hopelessly original, and men were so unfamiliar with the subject—­that I did not venture upon its publication until later, having learned that the merits of Christian Science must be proven before a work on this subject could be profitably published.

The truths of Christian Science are not interpolations of the Scriptures, but the spiritual interpretations thereof.  Science is the prism of Truth, which divides its rays and brings out the hues of Deity.  Human hypotheses have darkened the glow and grandeur of evangelical religion.  When speaking of his true followers in every period, Jesus said, “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”  There is no authority for querying the authenticity of this declaration, for it already was and is demonstrated as practical, and its claim is substantiated,—­a claim too immanent to fall to the ground beneath the stroke of artless workmen.

Though a man were girt with the Urim and Thummim of priestly office, and denied the perpetuity of Jesus’ command, “Heal the sick,” or its application in all time to those who understand Christ as the Truth and the Life, that man would not expound the gospel according to Jesus.

Five years after taking out my first copyright, I taught the Science of Mind-healing, alias Christian Science, by writing out my manuscripts for students and distributing them unsparingly.  This will account for certain published and unpublished manuscripts extant, which the evil-minded would insinuate did not originate with me.

THE PRECIOUS VOLUME

The first edition of my most important work, Science and Health, containing the complete statement of Christian Science,—­the term employed by me to express the divine, or spiritual, Science of Mind-healing, was published in 1875.

When it was first printed, the critics took pleasure in saying, “This book is indeed wholly original, but it will never be read.”

The first edition numbered one thousand copies.  In September, 1891, it had reached sixty-two editions.

Those who formerly sneered at it, as foolish and eccentric, now declare Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or certain German philosophers, to have been the originators of the Science of Mind-healing as therein stated.

Even the Scriptures gave no direct interpretation of the scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing, until our heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to unlock this “mystery of godliness.”