Mary Baker growing up – Joyce Voysey

How tenderly Tomlinson speaks about our dear Leader, and her angelic and saintly mother.  Mary began early to work for God in shepherding pigs, lambs, children in school.  What a good child she was.  Sometimes ‘good’ people are shunned for their goodness by the more worldly-minded.  Is this because they have a personal sense of their own good, rather than expressing the good that is God?  “Great only as good” Mary Baker Eddy says of Paul and Jesus in Miscellaneous Writings p. 360:6. May we not include her in that description?

It seems that the student of Christian Science cannot come to a new look at a book about Mrs. Eddy without applying what they have already learned of her, her books, and her works.  The student has grown in Science since their last reading, and has a different perspective.

The truth that God is Love, she learned from her mother; that God is Principle and law, from her father and her brother Albert. 

Perhaps she could repeat all Psalm 119 from memory!  Easily!  ...Which led me to check

if I was correct in thinking that that Psalm was all about law.  Dummelow’s One Volume Bible Commentary has: “The subject is practically the same throughout, viz. the great help and guidance and comfort to be derived from studying continually the Law of the Lord.”  The Message (Eugene Petersen’s paraphrase of the Bible) starts the Psalm off like this:

1.     You're blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God.

2.     You're blessed when you follow his directions, doing your best to find him.
3.     That's right - you don't go off on your own; you walk straight along the road he set.
4.     You, God, prescribed the right way to live; now you expect us to live it.
5.     Oh, that my steps might be steady, keeping to the course you set;
6.     Then I'd never have any regrets in comparing my life with your counsel.
7.     I thank you for speaking straight from your heart; I learn the pattern of your righteous ways.
8.     I'm going to do what you tell me to do; don't ever walk off and leave me.
 
It finishes up (eight and a bit pages later) with: And should I wander off like a lost sheep – seek me!  I’ll recognise the sound of your voice.

Not that Mary Baker would have had The Message to consult back in the 1820’s.  No doubt, she interpreted it through Spirit even in her youth.  One can hear the results of her childhood study in her published writings.  If one goes on a search, there is so much Bible language in her book Science &Health with Key to the Scriptures.  She either quotes it directly or uses phrases from the Bible within her sentences.  Page 10 is an interesting example, in the Chapter Prayer.  In my copy, I have marked three direct quotes, and four clear references.

In the 1820’s, were there any families as devout as the Bakers in Australia?  I doubt that even the church ministers practised their religion as vigorously as did Mary’s father Mark.  How differently our two countries have been founded.