A new look at Robert Peel

In our recent study of Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, we have just had two months of Robert Peel's working primarily with Principle.

But, there is an article published in The Christian Science Journal of December 1962 which has him working with Love -- such a different tone.  Hear this: 

"Love and delight are intimately related. To love anything is to delight in it. Pure love includes pure delight. Such delight is an upwelling satisfaction, an inexhaustible happiness, an overflowing assurance of good.

"It is the nature of divine Love to delight in its infinite spiritual creation."

I invite readers of this blog to investigate this different and delightful side of our author -- at THE MOTHERHOOD OF GOD.

Love youse all,

Joyce Voysey

Ed. - note 1: 

My favourite passage from Peel's article on Motherhood is this one: 

"At last, in the fullness of time, the Comforter came. On the prepared and receptive thought of one spiritually-minded woman dawned the earth-shaking fact that man is not the child of a Father God, who is Spirit, and a mother earth, which is matter, but that Spirit is both Father and Mother, the sole source and condition of man, his Life, his Principle, his All."

Ed. - note 2:

Readers will also be interested in a half-hour discussion about Peel's re-issued masterwork and about the author himself, presented by The Mary Baker Eddy Library. Among the panel members is Dr. Ryan Vigil, Manager of General Publications at The Christian Science Publishing Society.

Early footsteps of a pioneer

Mary Patterson was living in Swampscott, a seaside town just north of Lynn in Massachusetts, when she fell on the ice one chilly February 1866 Saturday. 

Weatherspark.com gives this overview of the weather in Swampscott:

In Swampscott, the summers are warm; the winters are very cold, snowy, and windy; and it is partly cloudy year round. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from -5°C to 27°C and is rarely below -13°C or above 32°C. 

Mary's fall and subsequent illumination of thought that enabled her to regain her health, set her future course as a spiritual pioneer in motion. Among the "Trivia" about Swampscott on its official website is this paragraph:

• Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science religion, was a resident of Swampscott when she found the “healing power of Christ” which is now a major religion throughout the world.

However, while her situation was difficult indeed, poverty, homelessness and singlehood* would not stop her imperative mission. 

She now reverted to the surname Glover. 

At one point, she moved north to the "little village of Amesbury, Massachusetts, tucked away tranquilly where the Powwow River flows into the lower Merrimack" ((Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 300). [See area coloured red in the map above.] Here, in her deep desire for "a place where she could be quiet and study and write" (ibid) she moved for a short time into a "large, fifteen-room Georgian house at the foot of Merrimac Street ... owned by a retired sea captain, Nathaniel Webster" (ibid). 

Soon however, she was forced to seek shelter "down the street to the home of Miss Sarah Bagley" (p. 303). She acquired her first Bible reference book, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, at this time, and soon teaching of her discovery began in earnest. 

While in Amesbury, she met and healed the poet Whittier** who was struggling with a chilly atmosphere both within and without, and who gratefully remarked: "I thank you, Mary for your call, it has done me much good" (p. 305).

Julie Swannell

*Around July 1866, Mary had "told her once-loved Daniel with quiet firmness that they had come to the final parting of the ways" (Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 276)

**Whittier's poems appear in many hymns in the Christian Science Hymnals:

• 49 Dear Lord and Father of us all
• 96 He stood of old
• 142 Immortal Love, forever full
• 170 Let every creature hail the morn
• 217 O, he whom Jesus loved
• 229 O Love divine
• 230 O Love, O Life, our faith and sight
• 238/547 O, sometimes gleams
• 372/3 We may not climb

A lovely sense of humour

It is heart-warming to read about Mary Glover's Eddy's humour.

Peel quotes her 1864 letter to Dr. Quimby describing a journey she took from Portland to Warren, Maine:

"...got into a villainous old vehicle and felt a sensation of being in a hen-coop on the top of a churn-dash for about 6 hours! when the symptoms began to subside, and so did the old cart" (Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 251).

She gave two lectures in Warren. The first "was thinly attended" , the "second ... she changed to meet what seemed to her 'a spiritual need of this people'" (ibid). 

Her irrepressible wit surfaces again when she remarked that she liked "much the hearts of Warren folks, i.e. better than their heads" (ibid).

Julie Swannell

 

A regular contributor to magazines

Robert Peel is a very thorough historian. I like the way he traces the unfolding events of Mary's life from Baker to Glover to Patterson, from single to married to widowed and remarried, while also seeing the trend of things. This trend was of a woman on a journey of discovery, a woman being prepared for her great life's work as the "general" of a great army (- Peel's description: Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p. 197).

I am impressed that Mary was such a regular contributor to the newspapers and magazines of her day, no matter where she was living and in what circumstances. Isolated as she may often have been physically, she seems never to have let go of an intense interest in the events of the world. An example is her poem of 1861, a "Sonnet to Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont" (ibid. p. 197), written during the tragic Civil War. 

I love the inclusion of several photographs in this latest edition. They provide excellent context for the period under consideration. 

Peel calls the year 1853 "Wilderness" (see Chapter 4). This was the year she married Daniel Patterson. She was thirty-two. Later, Mary Baker Eddy would give the world a definition of Wilderness in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 597), viz.

        Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.

Nine years later, in her physical extremity, she would take treatment from the magnetic healer, Phineas P. Quimby. Unfortunately, what seemed at first to be a miraculous recovery, soon faded and “the unhealed past rose up again, and old ills began to return” (Peel, p. 238).

Many years later, Eddy penned an editorial in a magazine of her own about some of the misinformation surrounding her relationship with Quimby and especially to his influence (if any) on her discovery of Christian Science – see below. 

Julie Swannell

"ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY"

BY THE EDITOR. 

From the December 1883 issue of The Christian Science Journal 

A word of facts about the old gentleman in question. We knew Dr. Quimby well for three years before his death; was his patient. He helped us; but our case relapsed. We helped some patients of his that he could not help. He never told us, or any one, to our knowledge, that he treated disease mentally: he was an acknowledged mesmerist, and manipulated his patients. He commenced miscellaneous writings after we saw him: had no school education, but had a sound mind, and many advanced views on healing. We caught some of his thoughts, and he caught some of ours: and both of us were pleased to say this to each other. He never claimed what others claim for him. He never systematized his writings; never verbally or by manuscripts communicated to any one, to our knowledge, how he healed; never took students, or presumed to establish a system of his own. We have asked him how he healed; but he never gave us to know.

It was after the death of Dr. Quimby that we discovered the science of metaphysical healing, and named it "Christian Science." Ours is a purely mental method of treating disease, and there is ample proof of its science. 

1853: a turning point

I have always found that reading about Mary Baker Eddy provides me with inspiration and uplift. Why?

It occurs to me that her early years, as recounted by Robert Peel in his Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, are of special significance because of where those difficult years later led. This offers great encouragement. 

Others may have had similar experiences - of loss, frail health, widowhood and poverty. But Mary had within her a burning hope that could not be extinguished. Peel hints at this on page 39 where he contrasts her brother Albert's "common hope of the Enlightenment [of the inevitable victory of truth over error]" with Mary's "conviction that rose like a rocket from her own insurgent heart".  

While "Mary Baker was always engaged with life" (ibid. p. 53), Mary Glover’s loss of her husband in 1844 (p. 98-99), then five years later her mother and her fiancé (p. 130), followed by her brother-in-law (p. 132), surely tested that engagement. Meanwhile, her very active six-year-old son George was no longer welcome in the newly re-married Mark Baker's household (p. 134).

Living with her older sister was not ideal either, though she spent two years in that household after leaving the paternal home. But young George was not welcome there either. 

Peel explains that the emerging friendship with her dentist, Dr. Daniel Patterson, in 1853 would provide a turning point -- “an entirely new phase of her life” (p. 150).

Julie Swannell

The Mary Baker Eddy Library has a helpful article on Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to dentistry.