"armed with power girt for the hour"

Peel has a couple of “Interlude” chapters in his book Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority (YoA).

There is a lot about armament, war and peace, and American expansionism at the turn of the 20^th century. the Philippines, Cuba, and Hawaii were all in its sights. Hawaii was “annexed” and eventually became a state, but there was war over the Philippines and Cuba, both of which eventually re-gained their independence.

The story has always been rather hazy for me. The Philippines and Cuba are so far away from each other – and there was no Panama Canal* at that time. I looked up a bit of history of the Philippines.My research suggests that Indonesians came to the islands around 3,000 BC, Malays 200 BC, and also “waves of Chinese”. Islam arrived via Borneo in the late 14^th century, while the 16^th century brought Spanish invaders. After the defeat of Spain by the USA, the Philippines was ceded to the USA. Then came World War II, General MacArthur, the end of the war, and independence in 1945.

[*Ed. Wikipedia has this interesting note: "A small flow of European immigrants came with the opening of the Suez Canal, (mid nineteenth century) which cut the travel time between Europe and the Philippines by half. New ideas about government and society, which the friars and colonial authorities found dangerous, quickly found their way into the Philippines, notably through the Freemasons, who along with others, spread the ideals of the American, French and other revolutions, including Spanish liberalism...In December, 1898, the Treaty of Paris (1898) was signed, ending the Spanish–American War and selling the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. With this treaty, Spanish rule in the Philippines formally ended...On February 4, 1899, the Philippine–American War began with the Battle of Manila (1899) between Americans forces and the nascent Philippine Republic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Philippines_(1521%E2%80%931898]

Cuba's history is somewhat dizzying: Columbus claimed it for Spain in 1492; it was a protectorate of the USA in 1898; and gained its independence in 1902, although Guantanamo Bay was leased to the USA! And what a chequered time it has had since then.

I like this quote from Mary Baker Eddy: “But if our nation's rights or honor were seized, every citizen would be a soldier and woman would be armed with power girt for the hour” (YoA, page 134).** I like to think that there need not be a single material weapon in the conflict.

[**Ed. The original appeared in the Boston Herald, March  1898, and is now available in Mary Baker Eddy's Miscellany p. 277 under the title Peace and War: Other Ways than our Own.] 

Hey! I have always read “citizen” as standing for the male members of the race. Not so in 2018. But what about 1900? In the course of my delving, I found a very interesting fact from the Australian point of view. I researched the question: “When did citizenship start in the US?” and found the following quoted on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site: "The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the Unites States." [https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy/our-history/agency-history/early-american-immigration-policies.]

And on page 138 (YoA), a very telling point is made: “For Mrs. Eddy, the healing of the individual was still the basis on which the healing of the nations must rest . . .when that (i.e. individual healing) has taken hold of mankind...the other will in time follow as a necessary sequence.”

How important is the healing of the individual!

We are indebted to Peel for his sharing of the experience of Mrs. Conger in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. Mrs Conger could see China standing up for itself.

Note 29 (see page 421) has an interesting comment, quoted from the book, A Century of Christian Science Healing, (possibly written by Peel as editor of that book): 

“Whether a Christian Scientist participates in the social battles of our day as a liberal or a conservative, a fighter or a reconciler, a partisan or an independent, a private or a general, his ultimate purpose is to heal. Yet most Christian Scientists would probably agree that up to now only a small fraction of the healing dynamic of their religion has been utilized in relation to the urgent collective problems facing the world.”

Joyce Voysey

Pictures and pastor

With a thought to present-day set up of Christian Science church web sites, it is interesting to note what Robert Peel records that Mrs. Eddy wrote about photographs of churches: 

“I recommend to all churches to give no special publicity and particularly no public pictures of their churches. It is too commercial, too cheap looking, too little like things that come in course and to stay; and too like a surprise that one can have a church edifice! These have always been my views on this subject. I felt so even in regard to the Mother Church – although that is an exception to all others.” 

(See Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority, by Robert Peel, page 402.)

On a different tack, I love what Edward Bates wrote about Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, 

“Two years ago you gave us our impersonal Pastor* . . . and now you give us the Impersonal Teacher” (ibid, p. 104).

(*Eddy had made the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures pastor of the church.)

Joyce Voysey

In answer to our question in the previous post, our contributor, Joyce Voysey, has sent the following:

Who knows best?

J. WOODRUFF SMITH

From the November 1978 issue of The Christian Science Journal

 A helper in Mrs. Eddy's household once said of her: "One time she told us not to say there is too much or too little of anything. She said: God governs. He knows best. He will do all things right."⁶

⁶ Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), p. 74 .↑   

Business, Mysticism, and Moderation

I have read up to page 98 of Robert Peel's Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority with a pencil in hand, marking arrows on points I wish to comment on.

Here goes:

Business

Oh! Here is a note from me on page 15 - “Trump 2017”, written alongside some discussion  about business men.  For example, the following, quoted from Mrs. Eddy -  

“The smartest business man is not scientifically a safe business man. He is not as smart as God, while he thinks himself smart and is quite unconscious of this thought.” 

And on page 16:

“What is your model business man – the real Scientist who plants in Mind, God, who sows in Mind and reaps in Mind, or he who begins with political economy, human plans, legal speculations, and ends with them, dust to dust?”

It seems there are always lessons to be learned, lives to be blessed. Therefore, in our time as in Mrs. Eddy's, we will find that, “There must be a blessing in it.” Even in world politics!

Somewhere it is recorded that Mrs. Eddy said, “Never say there is too much or too little of anything. God governs. He will do right.” (Ed. Readers: can anyone place that quote?)

Mysticism

On page 388 note 7, Peel speaks on “mysticism.” He writes:

“Mysticism in its primary sense of direct communion with the ultimate ground of being has become so overlaid with suggestions of the mysterious, the occult, the psychologically unhealthy, that it has become unusable in general discourse.” 

There is more of interest in that note. 

[Ed. Peel goes on to quote Eddy in the chapter "Christian Science versus Spiritualism" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in part:

"Science dispels mystery and explains extraordinary phenomena; but Science never removes phenomena from the domain of reason into the realm of mysticism" (p. 80).]

Google suggests that mysticism is: "Belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender."

Moderation

It is very instructive to read what Peel has noted about Mrs. Eddy's demand for moderation by students when they spoke of her place in the discovery and founding of Christian Science. For example, see page 38. [Ed. Peel points out her abhorrence of intemperate or adulatory remarks, and declares her preference for the terms "discoverer" and "founder" as a "victory of reason over mysticism" (ibid).]

Joyce Voysey

Peel - publishing in the 1970's

Well! I am back to Peel's Years of Authority!

I have mentioned the state of my Years of Authority before (November 2012) on this blog. It is falling apart, much notated and holds many extra reminders with the Index. Having myself written and provided an index to a small book, I am in awe of the scholarship that went into Robert Peel's trilogy of Mary Baker Eddy.

I particularly note that in his Preparatory Note, Peel thanks Allison W. Phinney for his vision, counsel and penetrating criticism of his work. It is not clear to me whether Phinney did this for the whole trilogy. The other volumes, The Years of Discovery and The Years of Trial have their own individual Preparatory Notes. Dear Allison Phinney is now a much valued member of The Christian Science Board of Directors. His service to the cause of Christian Science has been outstanding.

Peel also acknowledges the work of his secretary and assistant, Ethel G. Adelman. Having myself been a typist and secretary, I can appreciate (a little) some of her task over twenty years.

The book was published in 1977. Was Ethel using a normal typewriter with carbon copies? Probably not. The Selectric Composer typewriter was available in 1961. (On this machine, one could back-track in order to correct typing errors. We used one in our business in the 1970's.) 

The Internet tells me that the 1970's and early 1980's were a time of transition for typewriters and word processors. I am content that Ethel used at least an electric typewriter.

Although, hold on, twenty years till 1977? We go back to the 1950's! I find this an interesting aspect of the production of the book. Possibly also for our readers?

Perhaps Ethel Adelman proceeded from ordinary plodding typewriter to word processor or even computer.

Joyce Voysey

Ed. This reader finds this aspect most interesting indeed.  

The politics of feminism

Today, Mrs. Eddy might be regarded as a spiritual activist. In her time, the word was "reformer". But Eddy never approached a topic from a secular perspective. Her reasoning and logic always lead thought to both a universal and a spiritual level. 

For instance, on the topic of male/female identity and relations, Peel suggests that: 

"The politics of feminism was for her [Mary Baker Eddy] a minor matter compared with the demonstration of principled love for the whole human race" (p. 163). 

He continues: 

"The issue was little understood, even by many Christian Scientists. In Mrs. Eddy's terminology, the words "woman" and "womanhood" frequently refer not to a particular woman or to women as a sex but to woman is idea, or more specifically as that revelatory state of mind in which man is conceived to be the child of God." (p. 163-4)

This reminds me of Peel's comment from Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971):

"Mrs. Eddy did not ask for women half the world that men had made; instead, she demanded an entirely new world for both of them." (p. 108)

What a fresh perspective on a continuing and important topic.

Julie Swannell

"a brilliantly detailed portrait"

Our book for August is Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority, by Robert Peel. This is the third in his respected trilogy on the life of this remarkable religious leader, who remains largely misunderstood.

The dust jacket on my copy - published in 1977 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY - reads:

This is the third and concluding volume in Robert Peel's monumental biography of the founder of Christian Science. Like the first two volumes (Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial), it does not assume the reader's prior familiarity with the subject, but allows him to become acquainted with this remarkable woman at a significant stage of her career as though he were coming upon her for the first time.

The last years of Mary Baker Eddy's life (1892-1910) witnessed the triumph of Christian Science over some of the harshest criticism and severest crises that the new religious movement had yet encountered. In those years Mrs. Eddy formed The Mother Church in Boston, saw her movement spread to Europe and around the world, wrestled with the problem of spiritual authority in an increasingly secular society [emphasis added], and in her eighty-eighth year founded The Christian Science Monitor. During the same period, she faced lawsuits, personal attacks and assorted onslaughts by disaffected followers, the press, hostile biographers, and that spokesman for the age, Mark Twain [emphasis added]. But even Twain's mordant cynicism could not entirely nullify the incongruous admiration that flashed out in the midst of his strictures and led him to describe her as "the most interesting woman that had ever lived, and the most extraordinary."

The closing years of Mrs. Eddy's life are fascinating in themselves and round out Robert Peel's brilliantly detailed portrait of a great religious leader. In addition, this volume examines in new perspective the nature of Christian authority in an age of science [emphasis added]. 

Robert Peel has had a varied career as a college professor, literary critic, newspaperman, editorial consultant to the Church of Christ, Scientist, and writer on ecumenical topics. Besides his three-volume biography of Mary Baker Eddy, he is the author of Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture, of which the historian Perry Miller wrote: "No student of the religious culture of America can afford to neglect this book."

We hope you enjoy dropping anchor and taking the time to explore this vast and deeply informative volume.

Julie Swannell