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HE 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.”

My reluctance to give the public, in my first edition of Science and Health, the chapter on Animal Magnetism, and the divine purpose that this should be done, may have an interest for the reader, and will be seen in the