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Friday, 12 June 2020

A leader's keen discernment


 Annie Knott was appointed as a lecturer and for some time was not being called on to give lectures. Mrs. Eddy told her, “You must rise to the altitude of true womanhood, and then the whole world will want you as it wants Mother” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy vol 1 Expanded Edition, pp. 191-2). And, '“I would like to know who has the most intellect, the man or the woman? And then she laughingly added, “There is not any such thing as intellect, but I mean who reflects the most intelligence, the man or the woman? Take Adam and Eve, was it not the woman who first discovered that she was in error and was the first to admit it?”' (ibid p. 192). Mrs. Knott found this to be a new definition of intelligence.

Are we willing today to admit we have been in error on some matter?

Yes. Mrs. Knott started to have calls to lecture.

Alfred Farlow tells us how to interview Mary Baker Eddy - see page 211 of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy vol 1 Expanded Edition. Aren’t we, as members of Christian Science churches, often to be found saying, “I wonder what Mrs. Eddy would say”? The answers are all in the books.

And don’t we sometimes berate ourselves for not being able to assimilate more of Science? Emma Newman recorded Mrs. Eddy writing with thanks to Newman's father for a sermon of his which was published in The Christian Science Journal, pp. 294-300, October 1893. Eddy's note read: “God bless you and every day show you a little more of Infinite Love. Just your daily bread, more you will not digest” (WKMBE p. 240). Just enough bread to digest at a time. How wise! 

Now here is a condition which one would think Mrs. Eddy would never talk about – hermaphrodite mentality. At the time of the "Next Friends" suit, Hermann Hering says of the work done in spiritual defence: ‘The trial was a very stubborn fight, and there seemed to be no progress made and little indication that Truth would win out. There was some very subtle work going on, and finally Mrs. Eddy sent word to these workers, “You must know that there is no hermaphrodite mentality.” From that time on things began to break. The power of evil was taken away, and very soon the trial was ended’ (ibid p. 450).

The reader is not likely to recognise that big word, I presume. But it is a condition much talked about in our time. My dictionary defines it: A person or animal having both male and female sex organs or other sexual characteristics, either abnormally (in the case of some organism) or as the natural condition.

One stands in awe at Mrs. Eddy discernment of the situation!

The foregoing is the result of my having started to read our book of the month some time before it was announced. I made notes in the back of the book and referred to them for this writing. I am currently up to page 251 with Daisette McKenzie.

Joyce Voysey 

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