"Indefatigable labours to bless others"

I wonder what was occurring in 1904 that Mrs. Eddy’s Message on the Occasion of the Dedication of Mrs. Eddy’s Gift should be so full of strong metaphysics? I searched in Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority but failed to find anything that seemed outstanding. However, I did find a wonderful quote by Mrs. Eddy from Joseph Mann: “Who that has spent one hour in the home of Mrs. Eddy has not had his own slothfulness rebuked by her indefatigable labours to bless others?”

On further searching in www.JSH-Online.com, I found that this quote comes from Joseph Mann’s article Seventeen Years a Witness in the August 8 1903 edition of the Christian Science Sentinel.

 

Joseph Mann’s outstanding healing of a bullet wound is well known in Christian Science annuls.  In his article he expresses gratitude for that healing, and adds,  ”But during all these years (17) a still greater blessing has been mine, the blessing of thinking and speaking the word of truth through which hundreds of others have been healed.”

He speaks with wonder at the blessings that came to him through six years working in Mrs. Eddy’s household, many of which blessings sprang from direct observation of how she lived what she taught.  He says, “… six years of witnessing in our Leader's life the exemplification of her teachings; six years of extraordinary opportunity to practise in my own every-day life such a sense of honesty, absolute justice, and fidelity to Truth, as the world outside of Christian Science little dreams of, and of which even Christian Scientists outside of Pleasant View have more of the letter than of the spirit, as they would see if they judged themselves by the standard of the natural daily conduct of their Leader, rather than by the world's standard.”

Regarding my initial wonder at the beginning of this blog, I am left with the conclusion that Mrs. Eddy had seen what the field needed to hear from God through her at that time and she shared what was revealed to her.

Joyce Voysey