Final thoughts on Powell's book

Well, I have finished Powell’s book.  I found the last couple of chapters rather heavy with praise.

Some final comments from my reading –

1. A  delightful tidbit from the account of the much loved story of John Salchow picking Mrs Eddy up in his arms to get here into her new home away from the reporters when she was transferring from Concord to Boston.  The newspapers reported that, “A huge Swede grabbed Mrs. Eddy and ran off with her” P. 232.      

2. Powell got my attention by using the phrase “God emeritus,” on page 233.  “She knew no God emeritus; and those with her were permitted to know none.” 

Dictionary.com gives this definition of the adjective: “Retired or honourably discharged from active professional duty, but retaining the title of one’s office or position.”  And for the noun it gives “professor emeritus; minister, etc.” 

Now, Christian Scientists are familiar with the term “pastor emeritus.”  It occurs in the Manual of The Mother Church and refers to Mrs. Eddy as she stands for all time as holding that office of The Mother Church (p. 10 and 64-70).

It seems strange to me that Powell would even think of putting those two words together – God and emeritus.

3. A quote from page 250 about advertising in The Christian Science Monitor in the 1930’s – “Last May the Monitor was singled out by Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborne for first place as a national advertising medium, with no other daily paper even a close second.”

4. A definition of “unpardonable sin” – “Unpardonable sin means one that we are never pardoned of – but taught through suffering that it is a sin.”

5. I have long been curious about “Mark Hopkins and the log.”  Robert Peel quotes Hopkins as someone very famous.  I looked him up on Wikipedia.

Mark Hopkins (February 4, 1802 – June 17, 1887) was an American educator and Congregationalist theologian, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. An epigram - widely attributed to President James A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins - defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other."

In the later judgment of university historian Frederick Rudolph, "no one can properly address himself to the question of higher education in the United States without paying homage in some way to the aphorism of the log and to Mark Hopkins.”

It does seem that the quote could have originally been “log cabin” but how much more memorable is the log.

Farewell for now Lyman Powell.

Joyce Voysey

Ed.

Maybe God emeritus refers to the concept of God as Jesus and therefore of a God who has now retired from active duty.

Seek to perfect oneself

Here is a beautiful quote from a letter of Mrs. Eddy’s to General Charles H. Grosvenor:

“Upheld by divine Love man can make himself perfect but he must not attempt this too rapidly with his neighbor.”

The same page (199) quotes Mrs. Grace A. Greene:

She would often say to me, “I make my pumpkin pies thus and so,” or “I make puddings like this.”  One day I said, “Mother, can you really make pies and puddings?”  She replied, “Of course I can.”  And then she told me of making herself a bonnet and dress when she was too poor to hire them done, although she had never done such a thing in her life before.  She finished by saying, “If you are an ordinary cook, dressmaker, or milliner, Christian Science will make you perfect in any of these lines, and everyone should seek to perfect himself wherever he is, or whatever his calling.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

And what does Jesus the Christ say?  “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

Is not this the Science of Being which we are to demonstrate?

On page 207 I find something which was a new fact to me – Mrs. Eddy had seen that there was a need to preserve the teaching of Christian Science in Class Instruction and be kept pure and unadulterated for future generations.  She had Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Webster of Chicago form a committee of her old students and compile a set of by-laws in connection with teaching.

And on page 212 Powell defines democracy: “Democracy is impulsive.  Democracy resents privacy.  Democracy wants to know it all.”   One thinks of the ‘muckraking’ of Mrs. Eddy’s day and the effects of radio and television in ours.

Joyce Voysey

Right the day must win

When reading a book which has Notes on chapters in the back, it is an excellent idea to actually read those notes!

 In particular this week I have found a piece beginning on page 335 (it continues to page 338) about Mrs. Eddy’s inspiration in starting a Christian Science Sunday School. It tells of her coaching five year old Warren Choate to represent the idea of Sunday school by reciting a poem at a Sunday Service. (This seems to have occurred about 1883 when Mrs. Eddy was preaching at the services at Hawthorne Hall in Boston). The full quote from Mrs. Choate is not repeated in any other book I have read, and it is delightful—too good to miss by not reading the end notes! The little poem was:

 

And right is right – since God is God;

And right the day must win;

To doubt would be disloyalty,

To falter would be sin!

 Of course, we find the full poem, which was written by Frederick William Faber, English hymn writer and theologian of the Catholic faith, as hymn 86/87 in the Christian Science Hymnal: –

 

                   God’s glory is a wondrous thing,

                   Most strange in all its ways,
                   And of all things on earth, least like
                   What men agree to praise.

                   O blest is he to whom is given

                   The instinct that can tell
                   That God is on the field, although
                   He seems invisible.

                   And blest is he who can divine

                   Where right doth really lie,
                   And dares to side with what seems wrong
                   To mortals’ blindfold eye.

                   For right is right, since God is God;

                   And right the day must win;
                   To doubt would be disloyalty,
                   To falter would be sin.

The workers around Mrs. Eddy seem to have been somewhat perplexed as to where the children were to come from to be pupils in a Christian Science Sunday school. They (the workers) were, as Powell puts it, “above the age desirable for such a movement” (p. 338). Warren Choate and Mrs. Rice’s son were the only children in the movement and the Rice child was living in Lynn, not Boston.

The other matter which took my eye this week was the fact that about this same time Mrs. Eddy preached for six months in a Baptist church in Boston. The Note reads (Note 20, page 341): Mrs. Eddy wrote an early student: “a Baptist clergyman in Boston (now more of an Adventist) sent for me to supply his pulpit and I did, that gave me the opportunity for six months to keep the ‘good tidings’ circulating. I healed a large number by my sermons and they owned it at the close of them.”

Powell notes that she did this without compromising her message (p. 159).

Joyce Voysey

Consciousness and vision

I love the photo of Mary Baker Eddy on the dust cover of my copy of Lyman Powell's book Mary Baker Eddy - A Life Size Portrait. The photo or portrait of the Leader of the Church of Christ, Scientist, offers the reader a glimpse into her character. It suggests to me a woman at work, alert to the needs of the world, insightful and spiritually-minded, loving but firm, particular about even the smallest details. She was a woman of her own time, and yet a woman for all time. The portrait is very pleasing, even uplifting, and it belies the extraordinary privations she endured over many decades earlier in her long life.

Having now read the first three and a half chapters, I have journeyed with our protagonist through her childhood and early womanhood, her three marriages, the anguish of losing her beloved first husband George Glover and then her only son George to foster parents, the shame of her wayward second husband, the weary years of ill-health and poverty, and the glimmers of hope as she searched for the science of Christ-healing. Powell describes her as "a lonely and heroic soul singing to herself" (p. 111) and a Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby recalled her as "one fired with the prescience of a great mission...a beloved guest in my home...when in poverty she came to me, - no money, scarcely comfortable clothing, - most unhappy in her domestic relations. Her only assets being her indomitable will and active brain" (p. 112).

Of her manner, we learn that "Usually she was reserved...but...she talked very well and convincingly..." (p. 114) and "her conversation was always an inspiration and instructive" (p. 115).

Powell tells us that "her consciousness of God's power to heal...growing brighter with the years...was now at its full" (p. 120). Indeed, she herself related to a friend that "she had attained unto that consciousness of the divine Presence which heals the sick" (ibid).

I love the title of chapter four: Building the Book. There were nine long years between 1866, when she fell on the ice, and 1875, when her book would be published. During those years, she lodged in the homes of others. However, by 1872 she had saved six thousand dollars, and finally in March 1875 she bought her own home for $5650, and subsequently leased all but the front parlor and a tiny upper bedroom for herself.

Julie Swannell
 

Voices heard

Powell quotes from Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan where King Charles (of France, I suppose) said about "voices", that if there were such things, they would come to the king.  Shaw has Joan saying: “They do come to you; but you do not hear them.  You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them.  When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do” (p. 58).

Now I want to know if they are Joan’s words or Shaw’s.  I will look into it right now...No.  I couldn’t confirm it either way, except that the words are in the play.  It is beautiful thought, isn’t it?

Another comment I have is about the textbooks Mary Baker had in primary school.  How well she knew them - Lindley Murray’s Introduction to the English Reader and the English Reader!  They remind me of the English Readers we had in primary school and which gave me a solid basis for good literature.  For me, this was in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and I have the feeling that, at that date, not much had changed in education during the 100 years following Mary Baker’s school days.  Until recently I had a copy of one of my Readers.  I presented it to the Bribie Island Historical Society. (I received most of my primary education on Bribie Island.) 

Now, regarding a reference (pp.63, 64) to the voice and manner of speaking that we know Mrs. Eddy always considered to be very important –

“The voice and manner of speaking, too, are not to be neglected.  Some people almost shut their mouths when they speak, and mutter so, that they are not to be understood; others speak so fast, and sputter, that they are equally unintelligible. Some always speak as loud as if they were talking to deaf people; and others so low that one cannot hear them.  All these, and many other habits, are awkward and disagreeable, and are to be avoided by attention….” (Lindley Murray's Introduction to the English Reader, p. 102).

Nothing has changed, has it?

It is written somewhere that Mrs. Eddy admonished folk to speak distinctly.  She said that if they spoke so that they could not be heard, they were saying that they had nothing good to impart.  Now I shall have to find that quote!....Would you believe it?  I found the quote in the very first book I looked into.  The Second Series of the We Knew Mary Baker Eddy original books.

The incident occurred in Mrs. Eddy’s last class, and is recorded by Sue Harper Mims.  “She told us one thing that we should all remember.  She said, as I recall, ‘Now I want you to speak distinctly.  When you speak distinctly it shows your mental quality. Speak as if you had something that you wanted the world to hear.  Speak loud and strong and distinctly.’  Her own voice is very clear” (pp. 55, 56).

 

Joyce Voysey

The universality of Christian Science

Lately, the idea that all the churches, all the ministers, need Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures along with their Bibles, has been coming more strongly to my thought than it ever has before.  And I would like to see a Bible (or at least the New Testament) translation done by a student of Christian Science.

So, I was interested to read the following in Richard Nenneman’s  Preface to our book:  “Mr. Powell’s universality also led him to feel, perhaps more than he explicitly said, that Christian Science was something too large for the Christian Science church alone.  He did not deny the need for the institution Mrs. Eddy had set up to guard the purity of her discovery, but he also saw the need for Christian Science to leaven the teaching and practice of the other Christian churches” (p. xxv).

Of course Mrs. Eddy initially expected that Christian Science would take the place in Christianity that it deserved.

In Chapter 1, Powell goes overboard a little in quoting famous people who commented favorably on Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy.  However, he praises the way Christian Scientists were living their faith.  This reminds me of a comment a school teacher was heard to make about one of her students who attended a Christian Science Sunday School and was a sincere student of the Science: “She lives her religion.”

I can somewhat appreciate Robert Peel’s assessment that the author had more goodwill than insight in writing the book.  But I can also appreciate why the book appealed to me.  It showed me that it was possible to be good; it told me of a religion where there were no fetes to raise funds.  I like the way Powell says it:  ‘Without pulpit “begging,” without resort to church suppers, without any kind of money-raising by indirection, Christian Science has solved the problem of church support’ (p. 45).  This was very attractive to me.

Joyce Voysey

A profoundly influential book

April’s book, Lyman Powell’s biography of Mary Baker Eddy, had a profound influence on my life.  When I went on a search of the public library for a book that would help me to understand God (the church I had spasmodically attended didn’t seem able to help me in this regard), I was at the stage of wondering about the Eastern religions.  However, right next to those type of books, I found Powell.  I took it home and found that it told about what seemed to me to be a perfect religion.

In living with Christian Science in the some 50 years since then, I have not deviated from the thought that it is indeed the perfect religion.

Powell was at first a denouncer of Mrs. Eddy and her book.  Robert Peel in his book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority records that he wrote (in his pamphlet The Anarchy of Christian Science) advising ministers of churches to make a serious study of Christian Science so that they could fight it for their parishioners (p. 273).  Though Peel also records that in this same 1907 book, he also praised Christian Scientists –

“…Christian Scientists have brought something of the warmth and glow, the freshness and the spontaneity, the poise and the sincerity, the gladness and the other(-)worldiness which suffused the Apostolic age and made it all alive with spiritual power” p. 479.

It is not surprising then that by the year of the publishing of Mary Baker Eddy: A Live-sized Portrait (in 1930), he had totally revised his opinion of Mrs. Eddy.  Peel has an interesting note about the book to finish his discussion – “The final result showed more goodwill than insight” (p. 480).  You will be right in supposing that that opinion made an impression on me; so much so that I knew where to look to find it for the present writing.

Well, I find that I do not have a copy of Powell's book, this book that as I said had a profound influence on my life!  So I will trust our Reading Room can supply me with one.

Joyce Voysey

 

New book for April: Mary Baker Eddy A Life Size Portrait by Lyman P. Powell

It's Easter Saturday and I am reminded that it has been quite some time since our book club took up a biography of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, so we have chosen a classic from the series available through Christian Science Reading Rooms: Lyman P. Powell's Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait.

I found the information about Rev. Powell on Wikipedia quite interesting - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Pierson_Powell - especially the list of publications from his pen -

Publications[edit]

• The History of Education in Delaware (1893)
• Family Prayers (1905)
• Christian Science: The Faith and its Founder (1907)
• The Art of Natural Sleep (1908)
• The Emmanuel Movement in a New England Town (1909)
• Heavenly Heretics (1909)
• Mary Baker Eddy: The Second Seventy
• "The social unrest; capital labor, and the public in turmoil" (1919)
• Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait (MacMillan, 1930)

On another note: I was impressed by a recent blog from Christian Science Teacher and Practitioner, Evan Melanbacher, who was writing about following through with our prayers or any endeavor. He wrote:

"If you sit down to read a book with a lukewarm or nonexistent desire to finish the book, you may get easily distracted with other priorities after flipping a few pages. “Oh, I should go for a walk,” or, “I’ll read it another time,” cause you to put the book aside. And the list of excuses may grow until the book remains forgotten.
Finishing a prayer is similar. If we have other priorities, our prayer may never complete, and the sought blessing remains elusive."

[Click here for the whole post: http://spiritview.net/2015/04/put-whole-heart-prayer.html]

Let's all keep focused this month as we delve into this lovely biography.  Readers will be interested to search for Lyman P. Powell on jsh-online. I was delighted this morning to find this lovely article http://journal.christianscience.com/blogs/what-sunday-school-meant-to-me/a-practical-and-accessible-science written by my sister, along with many other articles about our April book! I discovered that the book was first published in the 1930s and was later re-published in the 1990s as part of the Twentieth Century Biographers Series.

I can't wait to re-read this book now!

Julie Swannell