Background to "Fruitage" chapter

The computer questions the word fruitage by underlining it in red! It obviously hasn’t read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy!

I have worked with many editions of the Christian Science textbook in some 60 years of studying it in conjunction with the Bible. They get shabby, you know, for they have to work hard.

One very early copy I marked in the margins all the testimonies which spoke of sight. I will now do the same with my current beautiful leather-bound and silver-edged Bible Lesson reading copy. I guess at 17. (Although I could use my paper-back copy. Which I consult in a more general way and for reading consecutively. I think I will, after all, the Bible Lesson one is bristling with lesson markers.) …

I have now read all of the chapter Fruitage. I did indeed use the paper-back Science and Health. I found 19 testimonies which referred to eyes and sight. Perhaps all of the testimonies really referred to an improved vision of what is true about God and man.

As I recall, Mrs. Eddy appointed William McKenzie and Edward Kimball to choose convincing testimonies from the Christian Science periodicals to make up this Fruitage chapter’s fruit.

Bless The Mary Baker Eddy Library. I find I was not accurate with the foregoing statement.

Here is what the Library has to say:

What is the background to the chapter titled “Fruitage” in “Science and Health”?

August 30, 2017

The chapter first appeared in the 226th edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which was announced as ready for distribution in the Christian Science Sentinel dated January 30, 1902. Two of Mary Baker Eddy’s students, Edward A. Kimball and William P. McKenzie, oversaw the production of this edition and compiled “Fruitage” from testimonies Mrs. Eddy sent them for that purpose.

Almost all the testimonies were replaced in 1906 and 1907, although it’s not clear why these changes occurred.

In October 1906 Eddy sent her student Edward Norwood a group of testimonies and asked him to select some for “Fruitage,” stating: “Please read carefully all the Testimonials in the copy and select those which you consider the best and place the most attractive testimonials at the commencement of the chapter on ‘Fruitage.’”¹ Norwood was responsible at this time for supervising the proofreading of the plates for the new 1907 edition of Science and Health. He received a package of testimonies clipped from the Christian Science Sentinel and the Journal, and individually pasted onto sheets. He records in his reminiscence: “A large number of pages of Sentinel testimonies was sent me, and I was directed to select the best of them, revise them, prune them, mentioning not more than two diseases, and giving each a title. In fact, a new ‘Fruitage’ was put in. This, itself, was quite a job, but of course I was glad to do it.”²

We have in our files Norwood’s accepted and rejected testimonies. The earliest date on any of them is October 1901. None of the testimonies he edited came from the 1902 edition, and most appeared in the Christian Science periodicals between 1902 and 1907. The bulk was from the Sentinel, with a few also from the Journal. Only one testimony from the 1902 edition of “Fruitage” also appeared in 1907 edition, titled “Desire for Liquor and Tobacco Disappeared.” It appears on pages 693-694 of today’s edition. We don’t know why this single testimony appears in both editions, and Norwood’s papers do not include a draft of it.

When announcements of the new 1907 edition began to appear, they made no special mention of the changes to “Fruitage.”

¹ Mary Baker Eddy to Edward Norwood, 3 November 1906, L11135

² Edward Everett Norwood, “Reminiscences of my relations with Rev. Mary Baker Eddy…”, 10 March 1924, Reminiscence, Edward Everett Norwood, 25.

How exciting is that!

Joyce Voysey