It's all about love

James Henry Wiggin* was a big help to Mrs. Eddy in “sprucing up” the text of Science and Health. However, he had added quotations from other authors, as for instance in the chapter epigraphs. Mrs. Eddy later dispensed with these, except for Martin Luther’s “Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen!” now found on page 268 of Science and Health.

I am reminded that literary people are frequently inclined to quote previous literary authors, it seems to me, to “keep the ball rolling.” Peel says she was “stripping the book down to basic Christian Science and eliminating the Victorian gingerbread” (Peel, p. 381).

I find the following point very interesting. On page 401, Peel writes about Mrs. Eddy’s work on revising Science and Health:

In the fiftieth edition she divided the chapter “Prayer and Atonement” into two separate and enlarged chapters. They had not yet been placed at the beginning of the book, where they would later go as the best possible introduction to the metaphysical topics that followed, but they already showed Mrs. Eddy's deepening conviction that the letter of Christian Science could be understood only through the spirit of Christ.

Mrs. Eddy’s exceptional expression of love is illustrated in her student Janet Colman’s** reminiscences –

I can see one thing truthfully that if I were asked today after all my experience with our Leader [1914] which was the greatest of them to me I would say this: I always found her loving her enemies, always ready to do them good, always would see those who had injured her if she could help them even before one who had been loving and kind to her.” [See Note 90, page 402.]

Now. I would love to share something from an article by Michael Mooslin in the March 3, 2025 Christian Science Sentinel titled Me, we, and them. The article mentions Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to church participation. I shall copy the whole paragraph:

According to a reminiscence by an early student of Christian Science, when asked what she would like to do if she were active in church work, Mrs. Eddy answered, “to serve on the Lesson Committee.” (This committee of The Church of Christ, Scientist, prepares the weekly Bible Lessons published in the Christian Science Quarterly, which are studied daily by students of Christian Science and then read aloud as the Sunday sermon in The Mother Church and all of its branches.) Mrs. Eddy explained that we don’t attend church to worship God but to express Him. “We study these lessons six days,” she continued, “then we go to Church to express God for the world—to give the world a treatment” (William Coffman, Memoirs of a Christian Scientist, 1955, p. 3).

 Joyce Voysey

Ed.

*See Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Trial, p. 379-385.

**There is a lovely photo of Colman in the centre photographs section.