Some of our present readers may wish to tone down the radical points in this work, others to cast them overboard; yet science will reproduce itself, and as mind changes base from matter to Spirit, there will be severe chemicalization. Truth cannot be lost; if not admitted to-day in its fullness, the error that shuts it out will occasion such discord in sickness, sin, etc., that future years will point it out, and restore at length the fair proportions and radical claims of Christian Science.146
The first or second draft of the book had been offered to a publisher in the fall of 1873 and had been rejected. After months of rewriting and recopying it was offered a second time in the spring of 1874 and was again rejected. Further rewriting followed.
Still entitled The Science of Life and still unpublished, it was copyrighted on July 7, of that year.147 A week later Mrs. Glover found a printer, W. F. Brown of Boston, who was willing to bring it out if she would pay all costs.148 On September 5 the manuscript was put into his hands. It was not destined to appear in print until more than a year later. Bogged in unfamiliarity, the printer undertook to make various small changes to improve the book, thereby altering Mrs. Glover’s meaning fatally at times. This fact, together with innumerable carelessnesses in the printing, made proofreading a horror for her; at the same time her own developing thought made her want to revise as well as correct the proofs, and that did not make the printer’s task any easier.
At some point the work stopped altogether for several months for unknown reasons, but Mrs. Glover later came to see the delay as providential, for it gave her a chance to incorporate in the book certain developing insights she considered crucial.
At another point she discovered that a book entitled The Science of Life was already in print and that she must change her title. For several weeks she waited, and then the title came: Science and Health. It was an ● ● ●
146 [Glover, Science and Health, 1st ed., pp. 455–456.]
147 Mary Baker Glover, entry dated 7 July 1874, notebook, EF109, p. 2, MBEL.
148 Mary Baker Glover, entry dated 14 July 1874, notebook, EF109, p. 24, MBEL; Charles N. A. Twitchell, testimony, recorded in “George W. Barry vs. Mary M. B. Glover,” 29 September 1879, 1924.002.0021, p. 8, LMC. The manuscript was not sent to the printer until September 5. [Publisher’s note: the first edition cites “Barry diary” at LMC. This diary has not been located, but it is referenced in Barry’s testimony in 1924.002.0021.]