Clocks, timeliness and structure

At our Wednesday testimony meeting this week, a testifier mentioned Longyear.org,  referencing her research on the topic of "promptness". This research had uncovered an article about a documentary film called "Who shall be called?". The film is about the workers who were called to serve in the household of Mary Baker Eddy in her later years. (The 90-minute documentary, produced in 2008, is available for purchase from Longyear as a DVD, and the full story behind it can be read here at this link.) 

For our blog readers, we include some points of interest.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE

The introduction to the article explains that:

  The film covers the years when Mary Baker Eddy was founding the Church of Christ, Scientist, a period of great historical importance for Christian Scientists and the world. 

KNOWING THE FACTS - INSPIRATIONAL AND ESSENTIAL

Describing the purpose of the film, the article continues: 

     Knowing the facts about how Mrs. Eddy and her household practiced Christian Science in their day-to-day work is historically instructive. It’s also inspirational. Knowing more about Mrs. Eddy will, hopefully, inspire viewers to reread and study her published writings on which she worked so tirelessly...

    Also, knowing the facts is essential to clearing away myths about Mrs. Eddy. And there are plenty of them! For just one small example, there’s the notion that Mrs. Eddy was not one to run her life by the clock. 

     In fact, Mrs. Eddy did keep her eye on the time. She had three or four clocks in her study. She had a clock on the table beside her bed. She even had an illuminated clock in the sitting room (also known as the “swing room”) where she relaxed at the end of the day... 

     Mrs. Eddy set aside for herself specific times for prayer. When she went to her desk in the morning, she opened her Bible seemingly at random (but actually with a prayer for guidance), read the first verses her eyes lit upon, and worked prayerfully with that passage for a period of time. Then she turned to her morning’s work. 

     At 11:00 A.M. on the dot, she set her work aside and went on the back veranda for an hour to “talk to God,” as she told her household. Systematically structuring her day hour by hour assured she would have the times for prayer that were essential to maintaining her mission.

Our testifier had also discovered a lovely article written in 2001 and titled "Timeless Timepieces". Here, author Stacy Teicher Khadaroo writes about Mrs. Eddy's gift of a monogrammed pocket-watch to one of her secretaries who was also superintendent of her grounds, Joseph Mann. (Readers will be interested to read Joseph's affidavit regarding his remarkable recovery from accidental gun shot - see Calvin Hill's reminiscences in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy volume 1, amplified edition, pp. 344-348.)

Stacy's article concludes with a quote from Mrs. Eddy's "Improve your time", originally published in The Christian Science Journal 1883 and now in Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 230:

   All successful individuals have become such by hard work; by improving moments before they pass into hours, and hours that other people may occupy in the pursuit of pleasure.

Thank you, Karen, for sharing your research with us!

Julie Swannell

A good Christian woman

Longyear have created a new 30-minute tour which features the artwork at Chestnut Hill (home of Mary Baker Eddy 1908-1910).

Here's part of the background to that decision:

One inspiration for creating the tour came when Rex Nelles, Longyear’s senior manager of historic houses, had to think on his feet to accommodate visitors’ request for a 30-minute tour (the main tour is up to two hours). 

They hadn’t realized that Christian Science was based on the Bible, so he walked them through several rooms to talk about Mrs. Eddy’s Bible-based art. Examples include a sculpture of David’s victory over Goliath, a print of Daniel answering the king after his night in the lion’s den, and a large painting based on the angel in Chapter 10 of the book of Revelation.

After that spontaneous tour, Rex recalls, one of the visitors said, “I really get it now! Mrs. Eddy loved the Bible, and she was a good, Christian woman.”

Read more about the tour here.

There is also lovely piece about the artwork in Mrs. Eddy's home which I am sure will be of interest to our blog readers. 

Julie Swannell

Three welcoming cheers

I was on a search for a story about Mrs. Eddy and her husband getting to Boston from Lynn (I thought) by public transport. It hasn’t shown up yet on the Longyear site, though I do have a copy of it somewhere.

 

Anyway I came across a fulsome account of the gathering of Christian Scientists at Mrs. Eddy’s home (Pleasant View in New Hampshire) and her address from the home’s balcony, where the famous photo of her was taken. It was the Fourth of July long week-end 1897, and also coincidently Communion Sunday week-end. The report has some wonderful details.

 

Many people were expected to gather in Boston for the Communion Service at The Mother Church, where over 1,400 new members were to be admitted. Mrs. Eddy didn’t wish to appear at that service, but she could see an opportunity. At that Communion Sunday service, just before the benediction, the First Reader, Septimus J. Hanna, read this invitation from Mrs. Eddy:

I invite you, one and all, to Pleasant View, Concord, N.H., on July 5 (Monday), at 12:30 PM, if you would enjoy so long a trip for so small a purpose as simply seeing Mother.

(There is a photo of Judge Hanna here.)

 

The article then tells us that the plans had been set in motion less than a week before. Judge Hanna had received a telegram instructing him to read that invitation and to “ask Edward P. Bates to secure from the railroad sufficient travel arrangements. Given the short notice, this was a massive undertaking, but true to his reputation, Bates pulled off the logistical feat. By 9.30 AM on Monday, July 5, about 1,200 Christian Scientists were ticketed, seated, and on their way to Concord, New Hampshire.”

 

It was a very hot day, 102 degrees. “There was lemonade in front of the barn and people scooped water from the fountain with tin cups.” But the people were “unfazed”. A total of about 2,500 people had come.

 

Meanwhile, Edward Bates was inside, freshening up after his transportation work. What a surprise when Mrs. Eddy asked him “to escort and introduce her to the crowd waiting outside.” So, “with her hand on his arm, they stepped through the front door at 1:00 PM to a chorus of three welcoming cheers.” There were eight speakers apart from Mrs. Eddy. The whole event took about one hour.

 

The article speaks of the debuts of “up-and-coming Christian Scientists, namely William P. McKenzie, George Tomkins, and Irving C. Tomlinson.”

 

Thirty-six year old William McKenzie was a member of the Bible Lesson Committee, for he had a record in that direction. He was educated in theology and had been for years a professor of both English and rhetoric. The article includes a picture of him standing with a hand on his hip. McKenzie was also a poet, and we have his heart-touching poem What brightness dawned in resurrection, set to music in hymn 381.

 

I was not acquainted with Englishman, the Reverend George Tomkins, DD, but may go back to him after I have spoken about the Reverend Irving Tomlinson, of whom we have a lovely photo.

 

Tomlinson’s book, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, was, in my early days, my go-to reference on Mrs. Eddy’s life. (Sybil Wilbur’s Mary Baker Eddy was the only other biographical work available at that stage.) Having recently re-read Tomlinson's book in its updated format, I have come to feel that his place in the Cause of Christian Science has largely gone unrecorded and not fully appreciated.

 

I must tell of a precious quote which I think is only printed in Twelve Years, namely: “One time she told us not to say there is too much or too little of anything. She said: God governs. He knows best. He will do all things right” (Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Amplified Edition, p. 87, original edition, p. 74).

 

When I read these biographical books which have no indexes (and even those which have sometimes), I make notes of points that impress me and record the page numbers. (You should see my copy of Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority!) 

Here are some points recorded in my original copy of Twelve Years:

·        Page 134 “Think before you act.” [p. 175 in the Amplified version]

·        Page 121 “The hall looks shabby.” [p. 153 in the Amplified version]

·        Page 76 “Exposing error.” [p. 85 in the Amplified version]

·        Page 156 “Home. Where sense has no claims and Soul satisfies.” [p. 211 in the Amplified version]

·        Page 74 “Resist resentment – take sides with God.” [p. 87 in the Amplified version]

·        Page 205. Talking too much. [p. 271 in the Amplified version]

 

Tomlinson was a new student of Christian Science. His first article** had come out in the June 1897 edition of The Christian Science Journal. He had recently had Class Instruction with Flavia Knapp, and we are told “his remarks [on the day] were prepared with guidance from her.” Mrs. Eddy granted him a brief interview after the program. She later recalled to him that: “From my first moments with you I have felt that you had come to help us and weighed in the balance would not be found wanting.”

 

All three (William P. McKenzie, George Tomkins, and Irving C. Tomlinson) were called to the Board of Lectureship in 1898.

 

Next, the article speaks of Mrs. Eddy’s address for the occasion*. It was of interest that she read from a prepared text rather than extemporaneously. Our article states: “While the particular “fire” she had faced is unclear, it is apparent her address came together just a few days beforehand. However, some of her main ideas and even distinct phrases were developed a number of weeks, or even months, earlier.”

 

There is a photo of Edwards Bates with a little story.

 

But I have written at length. How interesting this has all been. Thank you to our audience of readers.

Joyce Voysey

Ed. *Mrs. Eddy's address can be found beginning on page 251 of Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896.

Ed. **Tomlinson's first published article appeared in The Christian Science Journal and was titled "The religion of the Bible a religion of healing". It begins: As a clergyman my eyes were blinded to certain patent facts. I did not so intend, but I now know that I read into the Bible what was not there, and read out of it what was there.