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