Education brightening

In reading Chapter xii of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (by Mary Baker Eddy), the word “education” stood out to me.  As Christian Scientists we are all students gaining education in its true sense, the education that gains us more understanding of our relationship to our Creator, God; to our true being.

On page 252 we find: “The entire purpose of true education is to make one not only know the truth but live it – to make one enjoy doing right, make one not work in the sunshine and run away in the storm, but work midst clouds of wrong, injustice, envy, hate; and wait on God, the strong deliverer, who will reward righteousness and punish iniquity.”  And on page 253: “We understand best that which begins in ourselves and by education brightens into birth.”

Then the title “The Board of Education” took my attention.  This is the Board which oversees the teaching of students up to the standard of being teachers of Christian Science.  The different classes are called Primary and Normal; the Normal being undertaken in Boston (class is held every three years). Teachers then return home to teach the Primary Class once a year. 

But what a big, expansive idea suggested by that title, “The Board of Education”!  To me, it signifies that all true teaching and learning occurs through Christian Science.

In my JSH-Online.com search, I discovered that the system we now have for teaching Christian Science evolved over the years.  I also discovered this, which surprised me:

·         A man who had been a Special Agent of the United States Treasury Department, worked for Thomas Edison's Telephone and Light Company, and had lived in both South America and Europe, Joshua Bailey had taken Primary class instruction from Mrs. Eddy in 1888. As the newly appointed Editor of the Journal, he was asked by Mrs. Eddy to take notes during both the 1889 Primary and Normal classes taught by her. A very small selection of the Primary class notes was published in her Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 (pp. 279-282). Some additional notes from the same class, part of the Library's collection, are published below.¹

We can't make ourselves whole and see our neighbor sick.

One God, one Mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. In this truth we are in the divine harmony. The loving of our neighbor as ourself is just as imperative as one God. Thou shalt love thy neighbor &c. Then we have only one interest, no divided interest. It is no longer "My interest," mine & thine, but it is ours.

There is no healing physically without healing morally. You are healing mind, not matter. It's an action upon mind, not upon matter.

Do all we know, and God gives us strength. The only treating should be done by God, the only Mind, and stand there so consciously that those so-called minds have no power. One other thing . . . . If you don't succeed on this basis, then you must look for the malicious element. The power of hate was the ultimate of what the Master had to meet on the cross. This requires that you so love that there is no power of hate.

¹ A12065, courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Collection↑  

I particularly like the first truth recorded in these notes: “We can’t make ourselves whole and see our neighbor sick.”  My!  There is plenty of work to do as students of this Science of Christianity.

We have no record of this procedure having been repeated.  So Mrs Eddy obviously discarded the idea as not necessary or impractical.  Of course, The March Primary Class (Mis. 279-282) is well known and precious to students of Christian Science.

Joshua Bailey’s history in the annuls of Christian Science is quite fully recorded in Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial.

Joyce Voysey