Article January 2, 1932 Issue

From the Directors

Advertisements that Do More than Sell Goods

The Christian Science Board of Directors

Whatever will serve to interest new readers in our periodicals is worthy of the approval and support of every Christian Scientist. The Journal, the Sentinel, and the Heralds unfailingly present the unadulterated truth to those who are willing to listen. The Christian Science Monitor has a different but an unlimited field in which to extend its endeavors to interest and assist humankind. Besides the brief but straightforward statement of Christian Science on its Home Forum page, the Monitor invites the attention of the public through its news items, its literature, its editorials, and, not least, through its advertisements.

It may come as a surprise to many to know that a goodly number of people who are adherents of Christian Science to-day have had it first brought to their notice through advertisements in the Monitor. This statement may require an explanation; but when it is understood that a great majority of our advertisers are not of our faith, and that each of them gets a copy of our paper containing his advertisement, and naturally will at least scan its pages, we can see that the Monitor advertisement, which we may have regarded as a thoroughly commercial feature, has also a missionary value that is not to be overlooked. One may better see that it has a definite and important place of its own in spreading the gospel of Christian Science when one knows that more than twenty-two thousand advertisers, great and small, invest in our newspaper's advertising columns, and that many of them have made their first acquaintance with the Monitor, and subsequently with Christian Science, through their own advertisements.

Let us, then, in our thinking lift the Monitor advertising out of the confines of the commercial field, and no longer think of it as merely the fuel that keeps the machinery of our newspaper going. It is all of that, but much more, for it has possibilities of directing to the open door of Christian Science the unprejudiced reader who otherwise might have passed by on the other side.

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