Article October 7, 1933 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Stanley High, Scott Lidgett, Reynold E. Blight

[Rev. Stanley High, as quoted in The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts]

I suppose that a good many thousand of books rolled off the presses of the country in the year 1875. Most of them, doubtless, took a short cut to oblivion. That's the way with books. One of the 1875 crop is still selling. If it wasn't a best seller then it has become one since. It was written by a woman. That woman and her book have made discussion and controversy—some of it pretty bitter controversy—for more than sixty years. But they have also made history. The woman was Mary Baker Eddy and the book was Science and Health. The history made by the two finds concrete and living form in the Christian Science church, whose Annual Meeting has ... been concluded in Boston.

In its early days a good many reputedly wise and confessedly intellectual individuals ridiculed Christian Science. The ridicule didn't catch on; Christian Science did. Then followed an army of scholars who sought to shoot it full of philosophic holes. They did a lot of shooting, but they didn't seem to hit Christian Science.... Finally, in their wake came the fire and brimstone contingent. They dragged a lot of skeletons from the closets of theology and pinned Christian Science to them, but Christian Science did not pin.

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