The 50th edition of Science and Health: A significant revision

What would cause a church leader, author, entrepreneur, editor, and teacher to drop most everything she was doing? That question is relevant regarding Mary Baker Eddy in the year 1889. Living in Boston, she was preaching at her church, giving attention to the monthly Christian Science Journal magazine, and teaching classes on Christian Science at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College—as well as praying for and healing others. Yet that very year, amid all this productivity, she dissolved the church organization, closed the college, and moved out of the city.

As a previous article noted, Eddy was not satisfied with the quality of preaching at the church. She also found it difficult to find members to whom she could reliably delegate important tasks. She was looking for a way to grow the Christian Science movement without so much of it depending on her. And she evidently came to feel that a major revision of her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was the best way to fundamentally address the underlying spiritual need—even if she did not have all the details worked out. In her own words, “She closed her College, October 29, 1889, in the height of its prosperity with a deep-lying conviction that the next two years of her life should be given to the preparation of the revision of SCIENCE AND HEALTH, which was published in 1891.”¹ She likely felt that the best place to do this was somewhere away from it all, which turned out to be her native New Hampshire.

Eddy’s announcement to the Christian Science field came in the Journal. There, in a special June 1889 notice, she announced her retirement as teacher at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College and her resignation as pastor of the Church of Christ (Scientist). One reason given was that she needed time to fulfill “other duties that demand both my attention and retirement.”² Unstated was that she would be working on revising Science and Health.

A few weeks later, Eddy moved to Concord, New Hampshire. While looking for a permanent residence, she settled into a house at 62 North State Street. According to the reminiscence of Laura Sargent, a worker for Eddy, she wanted “a quiet place in which to revise her book.”³ Sargent observed that Eddy was oblivious to all else when writing—even, in one instance, to the point of not noticing when she slipped on Eddy’s overshoes for her daily walk!⁴ This hinted at the single-minded focus required.

For professional proofreading, Eddy turned to James Henry Wiggin, who had worked with her on a previous edition of Science and Health. Writing to her in May 1890, Wiggin admitted that it would be to his financial benefit if he were to help her to produce a new edition. However, he advised caution, writing to her that “too much change” could look like “vacillation” to readers. Instead, he suggested that she either make limited changes to the 1886 edition or write a new book altogether.⁵

While this might have been practical advice from a monetary standpoint, Eddy set out her perspective to Wiggin later that same month. She explained that her students knew that she was revising her book and that she did not want to disappoint them. She continued:

My book, as you say, will not at present be thoroughly understood. But it will continue to heal many of its readers, who are sick, and this will sustain the great demand for Science and Health.⁶

Eddy knew that the best way to demonstrate the value of her book was to give proof that it brought healing. And whether her work involved a minor or major revision, she wanted to improve the existing book.

Wiggin again wrote to Eddy in early September and questioned her on her use of capitalization in the revision, which he had addressed in his corrections.⁷ One reason that Eddy employed Wiggin as a proofreader was because, as she later stated, some critics had claimed her book was as “ungrammatical as it was misleading.”⁸ Perhaps Wiggin felt that unusual use of capitalization could affect his professional reputation. Eddy wrote:

My diction, as used in explaining Christian Science, has been called original. The liberty that I have taken with capitalization, in order to explain the “new tongue” has well nigh constituted a new style of language.⁹

As summer 1890 turned to fall, the 50th edition of the book was approaching publication. Eddy’s publisher, William G. Nixon, wrote to her in October, requesting that an announcement be published in the Journal, stating that the revision would be ready about the first of December, so that those planning on purchasing the book would be aware that an update was coming. “Some of the students feel that they cannot conscientiously sell the book, knowing that a revision is about to come out, without notify[ing] each and every purchaser of such fact.”¹⁰ Later, Eddy mentioned to Nixon that she did not want to place any ads before the new book was actually published, although she did allow for the possibility of producing 1,000 copies “in time for holidays” and waited on making some edits.¹¹ It is interesting to note that Eddy felt her book would make a fitting Christmas gift.

As December arrived she wrote to Nixon that she was glad to at last be done with this latest edition. Apparently the minor changes to the first chapter, referenced in her previous letter, had not been made, because she listed those that she still wanted to make: fewer sideheads and paragraphs, as well as a few word changes. “Then,” she wrote, “I think this Book of books will be as nearly perfect as books can be made.”¹²

In January 1891 Eddy wrote to her student Caroline Noyes that the 50th edition of Science and Health was being sent to the bindery and that 3,000 copies would be out in about two weeks. She added that, while this edition was “shockingly kept back by the press, the leaven of Truth it contains has been benefiting the world.”¹³ Eddy must have believed this 50th edition was a clearer revealing of the truths she was teaching, if she felt the book was leavening world thought even before it was published. By today’s standards, 3,000 copies may not seem to constitute a large print run. But this was only the first printing of this newest edition, and even that was done in small runs; Eddy noted with joy to her student Ruth Ewing that 300 of the 3,000 would be available on January 19.¹⁴

Finally the 50th edition was done! It was 651 pages, including a 70-page index. Reverend Lanson P. Norcross, pastor of The Mother Church, wrote a critique in the Journal,¹⁵ exclaiming that “we shall very soon come to realize that we have in hand a golden key with which to unlock the Treasure-house of the Bible.” He named significant changes. “Science, Theology, Medicine,” a new chapter title, opened the book. The first pages of the chapters explaining “Genesis” and “The Apocalypse” were “studded with new thoughts.” The chapter “Healing and Teaching” was now two chapters, as was “Prayer and Atonement.” And “Imposition and Demonstration” was now called “Christian Science and Spiritualism.” The platform of Christian Science appeared in the chapter “Science of Being” instead of standing alone.¹⁶ Also, the chapters “Marriage” and “Animal Magnetism” were both shorter, although many of the ideas that Eddy cut from them now appeared in different parts of the book.¹⁷ These changes indicate the extensive labor that Eddy had expended on the 50th edition. There are also changes that a reader of today would recognize in the final version of the book, issued in 1911 and containing Eddy’s last changes before her passing on December 3, 1910.

But Norcross went deeper. He addressed the question of why a revision of the textbook was needed in the first place and then gave reasons to read the new volume. As a book of “Spirit,” he said, it was practical and not theoretical; it was a rebuke to materialists, who would not like it for that very reason; and, it was a veritable wedding feast, “where Understanding, Truth, Joy, and Love nourish and sustain our fainting senses.” Finally, he noted that comparison with older editions of Science and Health would show “how the thoughts have risen only as we have been able to receive them.”¹⁸

After the 50th edition had been available for about a year, Emma Cooley, the editor of The Christian Science Journal, went to New Hampshire in 1892 for an interview with Eddy in her home. Their conversation brought out differences between that and previous versions. According to Cooley, “She said the older editions stirred people too much, and this edition quieted them.”¹⁹

The next major revision of Science and Health did not take place until the 226th edition, which was printed after the turn of the century, in 1902. Eddy made various changes to subsequent editions before she ordained the book, along with the Holy Bible, as pastor of her church.

Eddy completed the 50th edition in less time than the two years she had anticipated it would take her. After that, she was able to go on to other accomplishments. These included reorganizing The Church of Christ, Scientist (1892); constructing the Original Edifice of The Mother Church in Boston (completed in 1895); founding The Christian Science Publishing Society (1898); and starting a number of other publications (1898, 1903, 1908). Perhaps the need for a major revision of her chief work is best described in her own words from the book itself: “That which when sown bears immortal fruit, enriches mankind only when it is understood, – hence the many readings given the Scriptures, and the requisite revisions of SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES.”²⁰

Eric Nager holds a master of liberal arts in history from the Harvard University Extension School and has taught as an adjunct history professor at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. He served for 30 years in the US Army Reserve, in which his final tour was as Command Historian of the US Army Pacific. He currently works in the Treasurer’s Office of The Mother Church.