Aiming high

On page 280 of our book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial by Robert Peel, there is a useful explanation of the phrase the Word must become flesh*. Here is the relevant paragraph: 

Eastern thought might deny the reality of matter in terms that suggested Christian Science, but the latter insisted, along with traditional Christianity, that the Word must become flesh—the absolute must be experienced humanly as redemption and transformation, not merely as nonattachment and abstraction.  Moreover, the self-denial or surrender of will at the heart of Christianity meant commitment to active living, not ascetic withdrawal from the world.  Neither the mystic’s ecstasies nor the adept’s mental techniques were an adequate substitute  for the ethical imperatives and healing outreach of practical Christianity.

 Note 84 (on the same page) re Caroline D. Noyes tells us of the “high estimate Mrs. Eddy put on Mrs. Noyes’s potentialities—and the rugged demand she made on her most committed students”. When Mrs Noyes claimed that she had “done the best that [she] could”, Mrs. Eddy said, “On, no, you haven’t. Go right back and do better.” Peel notes that she “returned to Chicago—and did do better”! 

It seems unbelievable that some students worked without the Christianity of Christian Science in their healing work. See paragraph about three students—Swarts, Plunkett and Hopkins (bottom p. 280 to top p. 281). See also a quote (p. 313 last paragraph) from a letter from Mrs. Eddy to Mrs. Gestefeld, ““I have not been able to learn from your lips what your feelings are on the “Christian side of this Cause.”  Yet that, she added “is the only side.”” 

Oh dear! On page 293 we find an Eddy quote “...I am not doing for my church a tithe of what is needed.” One asks oneself, “What fraction of what is needed am I doing?” 

Page 336 gives a Jewish rabbi’s estimate of Christian Science (Maurice Lefkovits, The Attitude of Judaism toward Christian Science): 

Christian Science is more than a mere healing association.  It is primarily a religious organization.  It is a church. ... 

And it is a Christian religious organization. It is a Christian church community. … Its central figure is Christ Jesus. … It is he who is the original source and supreme sanction of Christian Science. There is hardly a page in “Science and Health” … on which the name of Christ Jesus does not occur once or more often. … 

           … Christian Science does not believe in the deity of Jesus, but it does believe that he was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God; and it supplements this belief with the statement that thus far only he, and no one else, has had such consciously divine descent. Christian Science rejects the belief that the blood of Jesus atones for the sins of those professing faith in him, but it emphatically upholds the belief that he, of all men, was the Wayshower, that he, infinitely more than any one else, manifested the Christ spirit, and thus he pre-eminently pointed and still points man’s way to salvation. 

I like Note 39 on page 350: “These two forms, masculine and feminine, both appear in the words of Jesus to Peter recorded in Matthew 16:18: “Thou art Peter (petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church.”” 

Page 377 has interesting information about the revision of Science and Health in 1888/89.  Mrs. Eddy employed Joshua Bailey, editor of The Christian Science Journal, to assist: 

The same qualities in Joshua Bailey which led her to choose him as editor of the Journal caused Mrs. Eddy to turn to him for help in the new project. At the end of 1888 she asked him to go through the book sentence by sentence and suggest rearrangements of material that would bring together scattered passages dealing with a single topic. He was not to change, delete, or add to her words except for necessary transitions. It was largely a scissors and paste job … Shortly after the work had begun, she wrote Bailey: “Your motives aims, and transfiguration are all known to me. I agree with your arrangement so far; perhaps our dear God will change it[;] if so amen.” Several times she had him stop work altogether, and eventually she wrote that she had had to throw aside all the work that he had done and start again. But the experiment was instructive, and at least one major recommendation by Bailey bore permanent fruit. In September, 1889, Frye wrote him, “Mrs. Edy consents to having you impersonalize [the chapter] ‘Reply to a Critic’...” 

The reader may wish to read around this paragraph for a better understanding of the matter.

Joyce Voysey

Ed. *John 1:14 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."