Joyce Voysey offers some answers to our questions on “Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy”

1. Ps 11: 1 says “Flee as a bird to your mountain.” What was Mrs Eddy’s take on this passage? (see p. 51 original ed. of Twelve Years..)

This question has been answered beautifully and at length by another contributor to the Book Club.  As I look at the quotation, now I see that it is talking about ‘your’, therefore ‘my’ mountain.  Could it be talking about the individuality of each one of us?  The exactness of the way prayer works for us?  Hence the rule that there can be no set formula for treating disease; each case is dealing with a different human consciousness.  

 

2. Who was Eddy’s instructor in reading? (see p. 80 original edition) 

Is this a trick question?

I thought it was the very first person to teach her to read who was called for, but it was the one who taught her to read the Scriptures well out loud, I understand.  Answer Mr. Sol Wilson

3. Which do you think is the most interesting of Eddy’s healings recorded in this book? Why?

The little boy who insisted that, “I is tick.  I is tick.” when Mrs. Eddy was declaring silently that he was not sick.  It reminds me of having visited a sister-in-law in hospital when she was said to be dying of cancer.  I was a very new student of Christian Science, though I must have read this book already, but I tried to know the truth about her life.  She had been just lying there on the bed, seemingly unconscious of my presence, but she turned to look at me and seemed to me say with anger, but no spoken word, “I am sick.”  She then turned back on the pillow.  That is the end of my story, but I trust that in some way the truth did reach her, so that she took it with her on her journey.

 “Life is real, and death is the illusion.”  (S&H 428:3)  The whole paragraph is instructive, as is every word of that inspired book.

4. Fill in the blank (Mrs Eddy’s words): “_____ first, preaching follows” (see p. 141 original edition)

 Prayer

5. After reading this book, why do you think Eddy founded a church?

She could not be without church in her experience.  She thought that because she had discovered and revealed the Science of Christianity, she was bringing a great boon to the churches, but they would not receive her, her revelation, and her book. Similarly perhaps, the chiefs and rabbis, etc., did not accept the Christ which Jesus represented in their age.

 And, she foresaw that church would be one of the ‘training grounds’ where her students would have to work at the demonstration of this Science.

And bonus question if you like:

6. What does the book tell us about Eddy’s thought regarding children?

Page 29: “I had seen that the way to have children stop doing wrong is to have them love to do right.”

I am somewhat stopped by this question.  However, some thoughts have come about the question in general: In thinking about material to put on a Reading Room window slide show on Prayer, I wondered if it would be appropriate to use the illustration in Mrs. Eddy’s work Christ and Christmas which shows a little girl with an open S&H on her lap and an aged gentleman with a closed Bible on a table beside him.  A quote from S&H came to mind: “While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth” (236:29). 

The sentence preceding this quote relates to Mrs. Eddy as well as to Jesus, I think: “Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right.”  In the picture (in Christ and Christmas), the light is fully on the little child.  Could it represent the Christ Science and old theology?