Needed: clarity of mind

Robert Peel has painstakingly recorded the different personalities of some early students of Christian Science. Many had great promise but fell by the wayside, some lured by visions of power and prestige; some mixing it up with Eastern thought – preferring “ascetic withdrawal from the world” to “commitment to active living” (p. 280, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial); some drawn to theosophy; some conflating it with “New Thought optimism” (ibid. p. 283); some falling into hypocrisy and selfishness; others founding their own churches like the Church of the Divine Unity (Scientist) – see page 305.

This tireless biographer points out the difference between “wishful thinking” and “exacting fact” (p. 305) and quotes Mary Baker Eddy's "new pamphlet Rudiments and Rules of Divine Science" published in 1887:

           A slight divergence is fatal in Science. Like certain Jews, whom St. Paul had hoped to convert from mere motives of self-aggrandizement to the love of Christ, these so-called schools are clogging the wheels of progress, by blinding people to the true character of Christian Science,--its moral power, and its divine efficacy to heal.

            The true understanding of Christian Science Mind-healing never originated in pride, rivalry, or the deification of self. The Discoverer of this Science could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, of friendlessness and toil, under which she needed miraculous vision to sustain her, when taking the first footsteps in this Science.

            Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial pp 281-282

An unrepentant student claimed that if Mrs. Eddy “had no more monopoly on Christian Science than the first writer of a textbook on mathematics has a monopoly on that subject” (p. 318). Peel responds –

           A captious critic might reply that theoretically any number of people could deduce Newton’s theory of gravitation from the same facts which led Newton to it, but that a “restatement” of it by a high-school boy who had been studying it in an elementary physics course might justly be considered a trifle redundant, not to say questionable.

It occurs to me that everyone has access to all the notes of the musical scale but it was only Beethoven who wrote the Ninth Symphony and to whom the credit will always be given.

Whatever the criticism or confusion or enmity or disloyalty, Peel points out the ‘the villain, from Mrs. Eddy’s point of view, was [not the people, but]… the human mind’s resistance to the impersonal demands of truth…” (p. 319).

And yet, other students captured the essence of this Science and stayed the course. Peel describes Stephen A. Chase, Joseph Armstrong, and Edward Bates as “men of superior ability” (p. 296). 

Additionally, two men “would stand before the general public as Christian Scientists more prominently than anyone save Mrs. Eddy herself” (p. 297): Alfred Farlow and Edward A. Kimball. These men shared the “qualities of humility, common sense, and breadth of outlook, but Kimball brought to Christian Science a large clarity of mind which made his service to the growing movement almost unique” (p. 298). Peel applauds the “spiritual power and logical persuasiveness” of his lectures which drew “overflow audiences” (p. 299).

Annie Macmillan Knott -- "a tiny, feminine figure with a voice deep as a man's and a heart stout as a lion's" (p. 301) provides an example of one who rose "to the altitude of true womanhood" (p. 302) to fulfil lecturing duties.

How grateful we are for current faithful lecturers, practitioners and teachers of Christian Science who are holding the banner aloft with meekness and might. 

Julie Swannell

It's all about love

James Henry Wiggin* was a big help to Mrs. Eddy in “sprucing up” the text of Science and Health. However, he had added quotations from other authors, as for instance in the chapter epigraphs. Mrs. Eddy later dispensed with these, except for Martin Luther’s “Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen!” now found on page 268 of Science and Health.

I am reminded that literary people are frequently inclined to quote previous literary authors, it seems to me, to “keep the ball rolling.” Peel says she was “stripping the book down to basic Christian Science and eliminating the Victorian gingerbread” (Peel, p. 381).

I find the following point very interesting. On page 401, Peel writes about Mrs. Eddy’s work on revising Science and Health:

In the fiftieth edition she divided the chapter “Prayer and Atonement” into two separate and enlarged chapters. They had not yet been placed at the beginning of the book, where they would later go as the best possible introduction to the metaphysical topics that followed, but they already showed Mrs. Eddy's deepening conviction that the letter of Christian Science could be understood only through the spirit of Christ.

Mrs. Eddy’s exceptional expression of love is illustrated in her student Janet Colman’s** reminiscences –

I can see one thing truthfully that if I were asked today after all my experience with our Leader [1914] which was the greatest of them to me I would say this: I always found her loving her enemies, always ready to do them good, always would see those who had injured her if she could help them even before one who had been loving and kind to her.” [See Note 90, page 402.]

Now. I would love to share something from an article by Michael Mooslin in the March 3, 2025 Christian Science Sentinel titled Me, we, and them. The article mentions Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to church participation. I shall copy the whole paragraph:

According to a reminiscence by an early student of Christian Science, when asked what she would like to do if she were active in church work, Mrs. Eddy answered, “to serve on the Lesson Committee.” (This committee of The Church of Christ, Scientist, prepares the weekly Bible Lessons published in the Christian Science Quarterly, which are studied daily by students of Christian Science and then read aloud as the Sunday sermon in The Mother Church and all of its branches.) Mrs. Eddy explained that we don’t attend church to worship God but to express Him. “We study these lessons six days,” she continued, “then we go to Church to express God for the world—to give the world a treatment” (William Coffman, Memoirs of a Christian Scientist, 1955, p. 3).

 Joyce Voysey

Ed.

*See Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Trial, p. 379-385.

**There is a lovely photo of Colman in the centre photographs section.

Aiming high

On page 280 of our book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial by Robert Peel, there is a useful explanation of the phrase the Word must become flesh*. Here is the relevant paragraph: 

Eastern thought might deny the reality of matter in terms that suggested Christian Science, but the latter insisted, along with traditional Christianity, that the Word must become flesh—the absolute must be experienced humanly as redemption and transformation, not merely as nonattachment and abstraction.  Moreover, the self-denial or surrender of will at the heart of Christianity meant commitment to active living, not ascetic withdrawal from the world.  Neither the mystic’s ecstasies nor the adept’s mental techniques were an adequate substitute  for the ethical imperatives and healing outreach of practical Christianity.

 Note 84 (on the same page) re Caroline D. Noyes tells us of the “high estimate Mrs. Eddy put on Mrs. Noyes’s potentialities—and the rugged demand she made on her most committed students”. When Mrs Noyes claimed that she had “done the best that [she] could”, Mrs. Eddy said, “On, no, you haven’t. Go right back and do better.” Peel notes that she “returned to Chicago—and did do better”! 

It seems unbelievable that some students worked without the Christianity of Christian Science in their healing work. See paragraph about three students—Swarts, Plunkett and Hopkins (bottom p. 280 to top p. 281). See also a quote (p. 313 last paragraph) from a letter from Mrs. Eddy to Mrs. Gestefeld, ““I have not been able to learn from your lips what your feelings are on the “Christian side of this Cause.”  Yet that, she added “is the only side.”” 

Oh dear! On page 293 we find an Eddy quote “...I am not doing for my church a tithe of what is needed.” One asks oneself, “What fraction of what is needed am I doing?” 

Page 336 gives a Jewish rabbi’s estimate of Christian Science (Maurice Lefkovits, The Attitude of Judaism toward Christian Science): 

Christian Science is more than a mere healing association.  It is primarily a religious organization.  It is a church. ... 

And it is a Christian religious organization. It is a Christian church community. … Its central figure is Christ Jesus. … It is he who is the original source and supreme sanction of Christian Science. There is hardly a page in “Science and Health” … on which the name of Christ Jesus does not occur once or more often. … 

           … Christian Science does not believe in the deity of Jesus, but it does believe that he was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God; and it supplements this belief with the statement that thus far only he, and no one else, has had such consciously divine descent. Christian Science rejects the belief that the blood of Jesus atones for the sins of those professing faith in him, but it emphatically upholds the belief that he, of all men, was the Wayshower, that he, infinitely more than any one else, manifested the Christ spirit, and thus he pre-eminently pointed and still points man’s way to salvation. 

I like Note 39 on page 350: “These two forms, masculine and feminine, both appear in the words of Jesus to Peter recorded in Matthew 16:18: “Thou art Peter (petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church.”” 

Page 377 has interesting information about the revision of Science and Health in 1888/89.  Mrs. Eddy employed Joshua Bailey, editor of The Christian Science Journal, to assist: 

The same qualities in Joshua Bailey which led her to choose him as editor of the Journal caused Mrs. Eddy to turn to him for help in the new project. At the end of 1888 she asked him to go through the book sentence by sentence and suggest rearrangements of material that would bring together scattered passages dealing with a single topic. He was not to change, delete, or add to her words except for necessary transitions. It was largely a scissors and paste job … Shortly after the work had begun, she wrote Bailey: “Your motives aims, and transfiguration are all known to me. I agree with your arrangement so far; perhaps our dear God will change it[;] if so amen.” Several times she had him stop work altogether, and eventually she wrote that she had had to throw aside all the work that he had done and start again. But the experiment was instructive, and at least one major recommendation by Bailey bore permanent fruit. In September, 1889, Frye wrote him, “Mrs. Edy consents to having you impersonalize [the chapter] ‘Reply to a Critic’...” 

The reader may wish to read around this paragraph for a better understanding of the matter.

Joyce Voysey

Ed. *John 1:14 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."