Recollections from some students

 On page 112 (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Volume 2, Expanded Edition), Lida W. Fitzpatrick’s “Gems of Instruction and Encouragement” – recollections of Mary Baker Eddy’s teaching – speak of Jesus having endured. And it tells us that we shall be saved if we endure.

We also find references to breaking laws (of sense). For example, page 112: “You cannot enter eternity until you have broken the law (or sense) of time.” One can ponder the laws that seem to confront and confound us and know that they can be broken by Spirit, e.g. “law” of old age comes to mind, “laws” of material deterioration.

This, on page 128, is something we can practise: “Jesus read the minds of his students; he saw their sins but did not believe it was their [m]ind, and this did the healing.” We can take this to the highest level of government. The so-called mind of a man which takes a country to war with a neighbour is not really the mind of that man. So how can we explain it.? Error cannot be explained. Mind is the only actor. And man has, in reality, the same mind which was also in Christ Jesus.

On page 128, Fitzpatrick recalls Mrs. Eddy giving the two commandments: “Have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3) and “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 468).

Here is good advice for when we make arrangements for some event (a lecture comes to mind). Fitzpatrick reports that Mrs Eddy said: “Do not arrange things then go to God, but go to God first” (p. 133).

Note from 1907 Easter—Resurrection (page 137). This is very worthy of some study about not patching up the old, but putting on the new.

Joseph Mann (pp. 144-172) and his sister Pauline lived on the property that was to become the site where The Mother Church was built, and that provided board and lodging to other Christian Scientists. Annie Knott was one of the boarders.

I love the story by Joseph Mann beginning on page 153. I will quote it:

Mr. Frye and I, by her special and impromptu appointment one Sunday, read for Mrs. Eddy and her household the universal Lesson-sermon; this was the first time that Mrs. Eddy had heard the reading of the services which she had instituted for her Church, over which the impersonal pastor, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ordained by her, was presiding.

I venture to say that two readers have never had so interested and interesting a listener as Mrs. Eddy on that memorable Sunday at Pleasant View. At the close of the heavenly little home-service, Mrs. Eddy thanked the readers most heartily for their part; she expressed her joy in the sermon and gave a special word of praise to the reader of the Scriptures, assuring him lovingly, that she had never heard the Bible read more understandingly.

Surely the Second Reader was Mann himself!   And it comes to mind that Mary Baker Eddy as the Pastor Emeritus of her church (Church Manual 25:2) could be thought of as the continuing Pastor.

Joyce Voysey