Needed: clarity of mind

Robert Peel has painstakingly recorded the different personalities of some early students of Christian Science. Many had great promise but fell by the wayside, some lured by visions of power and prestige; some mixing it up with Eastern thought – preferring “ascetic withdrawal from the world” to “commitment to active living” (p. 280, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial); some drawn to theosophy; some conflating it with “New Thought optimism” (ibid. p. 283); some falling into hypocrisy and selfishness; others founding their own churches like the Church of the Divine Unity (Scientist) – see page 305.

This tireless biographer points out the difference between “wishful thinking” and “exacting fact” (p. 305) and quotes Mary Baker Eddy's "new pamphlet Rudiments and Rules of Divine Science" published in 1887:

           A slight divergence is fatal in Science. Like certain Jews, whom St. Paul had hoped to convert from mere motives of self-aggrandizement to the love of Christ, these so-called schools are clogging the wheels of progress, by blinding people to the true character of Christian Science,--its moral power, and its divine efficacy to heal.

            The true understanding of Christian Science Mind-healing never originated in pride, rivalry, or the deification of self. The Discoverer of this Science could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, of friendlessness and toil, under which she needed miraculous vision to sustain her, when taking the first footsteps in this Science.

            Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial pp 281-282

An unrepentant student claimed that if Mrs. Eddy “had no more monopoly on Christian Science than the first writer of a textbook on mathematics has a monopoly on that subject” (p. 318). Peel responds –

           A captious critic might reply that theoretically any number of people could deduce Newton’s theory of gravitation from the same facts which led Newton to it, but that a “restatement” of it by a high-school boy who had been studying it in an elementary physics course might justly be considered a trifle redundant, not to say questionable.

It occurs to me that everyone has access to all the notes of the musical scale but it was only Beethoven who wrote the Ninth Symphony and to whom the credit will always be given.

Whatever the criticism or confusion or enmity or disloyalty, Peel points out the ‘the villain, from Mrs. Eddy’s point of view, was [not the people, but]… the human mind’s resistance to the impersonal demands of truth…” (p. 319).

And yet, other students captured the essence of this Science and stayed the course. Peel describes Stephen A. Chase, Joseph Armstrong, and Edward Bates as “men of superior ability” (p. 296). 

Additionally, two men “would stand before the general public as Christian Scientists more prominently than anyone save Mrs. Eddy herself” (p. 297): Alfred Farlow and Edward A. Kimball. These men shared the “qualities of humility, common sense, and breadth of outlook, but Kimball brought to Christian Science a large clarity of mind which made his service to the growing movement almost unique” (p. 298). Peel applauds the “spiritual power and logical persuasiveness” of his lectures which drew “overflow audiences” (p. 299).

Annie Macmillan Knott -- "a tiny, feminine figure with a voice deep as a man's and a heart stout as a lion's" (p. 301) provides an example of one who rose "to the altitude of true womanhood" (p. 302) to fulfil lecturing duties.

How grateful we are for current faithful lecturers, practitioners and teachers of Christian Science who are holding the banner aloft with meekness and might. 

Julie Swannell