Franklin, Eddy, and the Preface to Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age

The Preface seems to guarantee that some of this book may be difficult to understand.  I suppose that Peel had a sense of humour, but I don’t really think he was joking about not reading chapter one immediately, though I must admit to a little chuckle on reading that warning.

I did start on the first chapter last night.  I won’t say I gave up, but I did remember having seen a chapter Personal Testament at the back of the book.  So I read that.  Peel certainly had strong and convincing proof in his own family that Christian Science heals.  What fine women he had for mother and grandmother.

Here, I am going to wax somewhat philosophical. One book I am reading at present is Carl Van Doren’s Benjamin Franklin, the life of a philosopher extraordinare.  I am sure Mary Baker Eddy was familiar with more of Benjamin Franklin’s good works
than his appointment to the committee in France which investigated mesmerism.  (See Science & Health 100, 101.)  After all, he has a very prominent position in the history of the beginnings of the United States.  And he lived to within thirty years of her birth.  (Ed. Franklin lived 1706 – 1790.)

 

To Franklin, everything observed was a sort of burning bush.  His inventions, his writings, his knowledge, his lack of formal education, his prodigious reading and self-education made him become possibly the most cultured and influential thinker not only in America, but possibly the world.  He was first a printer, then a journalist, philosopher, developer of electricity, scientist, Postmaster, mediator, musician, diplomat, the voice of the United States of America in Europe after the Declaration of Independence had been signed, but was not yet a reality, with many other accomplishments along the way.

 

The way I see it, he was one who prepared the way in America for Christian Science to be discovered there, bringing a leavening of thought.  (Interestingly, he was born in Boston.)  Not that he was a formally religious man, though he knew the Bible intimately, but the following gives a taste of his thought.  I think of him as a sort of John the Baptist to Mary Baker Eddy.

Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen “Virtues”, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726), and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His Autobiography lists his “Thirteen Virtues” as:

Temperance:		Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence:		Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversations.
Order:		Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution:		Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality:		Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing.
Industry:		Lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity:		Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly.
Justice:		Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation:		Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think you deserve.
Cleanliness:		Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation.
Tranquillity:		Be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity:		Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
Humility:		Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

The thing with Franklin is that he actually endeavoured to live with and by these virtues.  One outstanding instance cited in the book is his silence in the face of extraordinary hour-long abuse by Alexander Wedderburn at the Cockpit, an amphitheatre in London's Whitehall Palace.  Surely this was evidence of his endeavouring to practise the last of his desired Virtues.

While Franklin was very prominent among those who questioned things of nature and looked for material laws to explain and exploit them, e.g. the lightning rod and the Gulf Stream, Mary Baker Eddy questioned material laws of health, indeed all material laws, and saw divine law as dismissing them. To her, all Science is divine. Franklin must work with and ponder material cause and effect in order to find better, more useful ways to do things, while Mrs Eddy went so much higher; to her all Science is divine, all cause and effect spiritually mental.  “God is Mind, and God is infinite; hence all is mind.”  (S&H 492:25-26)

We might imagine a meeting between Mary Baker Eddy and Benjamin Franklin.  I wonder how Robert Peel would have them converse.  Certainly, Mrs. Eddy would never change her stance for the allness of God.  And, certainly, she could prove her Science by healing him of his gout, for which he never took drugs. When in his 80's he said he would not risk an operation for bladder stone, and said, "... I am more afraid of the medicines than of the malady" P.634 Benjamin Franklin).  Am I anywhere close to Peel’s reasoning in his first chapter?

Well, I have re-read the chapter and am most impressed with this statement:

“With the word cured we reach at last the real subject of this book.  To cure is to change the evidence before the human senses, to actualise the possibility of a good that transcends but also transforms a disordered situation.  The disorder may be a malfunctioning bodily organ or a physical universe emptied of ultimate meaning – emptied, for millions of people today, of a believably loving and all-powerful God.” (page 6)

The physicists and other ‘ists’ have to be “cured” of their belief that matter is all and everything; just as the theologists must be “cured” of their old theological beliefs. 

“…I was healed of my old theological beliefs.”  This is a phrase from Simonsen’s book From the Methodist Pulpit into Christian Science (pp78, 79).  He was speaking of his experience of Class Instruction in Christian Science.  I was thrilled that old theology is a belief as much as is sickness, and that it can be cured/healed!

Joyce Voysey