Publishing Church

Unconcerned with ritual, the Church of Christ, Scientist has always put its emphasis upon reading matter. Christian Scientists listen to "readers." not preachers. All churches have "reading rooms." Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy was an ambitious stylist, curiously preoccupied with publishing and publicizing. She continually revised her extraordinary masterpiece, Science & Health, and her followers loyally purchased 57 varieties of editions between 1875 and 1907. Many of the "bylaws" which Mrs. Eddy imperiously wrote into the Manual (laws of the Mother Church) dealt with publications, such as one forbidding Christian Scientists to patronize booksellers handling works unfavorable to her or her teachings. The smooth-running organization which Mrs. Eddy set up, with a potent, self-perpetuating Board at the top, has kept things going since her death. There are one-man Committees on Publications in every state (two in California), and close to the Mother Church in Boston the Christian Science Publishing Society unceasingly grinds out printed matter. World-famed is the Christian Science Monitor, circulation 129,260. The Sentinel runs to 170,784 copies weekly; monthly Heralds are published in French, German, Dutch, Scandinavian and Braille. Last week when 5,000 members from many lands met in Boston for the annual meeting of the Mother Church, of most interest to them was the new, nearly completed Christian Science publishing house, a $4,000,000 edifice for which 47 Back Bay structures were razed. Built of limestone, heavily classical in design, like some sort of government building, it is to be a showplace like the adjacent, domed Mother Church. Last week Publishing Society officials were pleased to announce that no more contributions would be needed after July. The Monitor is already being partly printed in the new home.

Church Proper. During the past year, 72 new branch churches were formed, in such places as Kenya, Cairo, Brazil and Australasia. Twenty-six Christian Science societies qualified as churches. The Mother Church has now 2,639 such branches. Financial statement: fat balance to begin with; nearly $4,000,000 received during the year; more than $4,000,000 disbursed; balance on hand as of last April, $1,864,699.12 in general and trust funds. Every year the Mother Church elects a nominal president. Last week Miss Mary G. Ewing of Brookline. Mass.* succeeded onetime Governor Ralph O. Brewster of Maine. Born 50-odd years ago in Quincy, Ill., grey-haired Miss Ewing is the second woman to be elected. She was taught Christian Science by her mother who became a pupil of Mrs. Eddy after the healing of her husband Judge William G. Ewing. Miss Ewing studied at "Massachusetts Metaphysical College" which ambitious Mrs. Eddy envisioned as a full-fledged place of learning but which now consists of a fortnight's course for 30 people at the Mother Church. Member of many boards and committees, including one which selects Sunday reading for all C. S. churches, President Ewing declared last week that Mrs. Eddy had foretold present conditions in Science Or Health: "The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. . . . Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization. This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue until all errors of belief yield to understanding."

*Not to be confused with Mrs. Mary Cross Ewing, dean of residence at Wellesley College.

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