Aglow

I love this sentence: “There is something inexpressibly sweeter about the approval of one’s own than all the praise the world can give." (See top of page 41 Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph by Julia Michael Johnston.) I feel I may have come across this thought expressed somewhere else in my extended reading about Christian Science and its students. I wonder if that other offering was a repetition of this? Perhaps I will come across it again and my wonder will be satisfied.

Page 44 has another “glow.” “While her body had to be satisfied with frugal living, and occasionally with rooms so cold in winter that her fingers became stiff while writing, her thought soared in freedom, aglow with revelation.”

Page 47. Speaking of the development of the United States of America, our author says, “While men fathered the general growth of a nation, women mothered ideas and contributed to the moral and spiritual development of the country.”

Page 60 brings us this about Mrs. Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

“The reader finds that he cannot close this book and leave the words between the covers. They take root in his consciousness and begin his transformation, whether he will or not. They impel each one, who understands them to discover his true sonship with God. Thus he becomes his own physician and minister. Each proof of the Science which this book contains reveals the possibility of greater works. The student of Science and Health does not come to a point of saturation in his reflection and demonstration of the truths presented by this “key” to the Scriptures, but gradually associates himself with the unfolding of eternal Truth. And who would, or can, deny Truth?”

It makes one’s heart glow!

One more pencil mark on page 84. “About Mary Baker Eddy: Her exalted discernment was ever blessed with compassion for sin-sick humanity. She never mentally stooped to the distressing beliefs of those who came to her for help, but lifted them on wings of healing to feel the altitude of her vision. The truth which she declared, demanded and received her full allegiance.”

Joyce Voysey

Lovely phrasing

I have to report that I have finished reading Julia Michael Johnston's book, Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph. As I read, I put pencil marks next to things I wished to comment on.

The first one was on page 2. Speaking of the coming of what was to become to be known as Christian Science, Johnston says:

This fulfillment came to the reappearing of Christianity in its primitive strength of the first centuries when the sick as well as the sinning were healed by divine means, and the raising of the dead, in the words of Gibbon, “was very far from being esteemed as an uncommon event” (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon).

I read Gibbon’s book many years ago. It is referred to in the Christian Science periodicals.  (See for instance “The Divine Origin of Christian Science” by Lewis R. Works, in the June 15, 1907, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.)

The book was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Through the Internet, I have purchased and received a copy of the abridged edition (Penguin Classics) of Gibbon’s work. (This is the same edition as came to me among my brother’s things following his death in World War II.) It is quite a thick book, but the part about Christianity is quite easily found from the Index. It’s Chapter VIII: “The progress of the Christian Religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians – Persecutions of the primitive Christians”.

So… In the subheading “The Miraculous Powers of the Early Church", we find this:

“...from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, [Christianity] has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead.”

Students of Christian Science will see a connection in those attributes. Do we not find on the “logo” of Christian Science, the Cross and Crown, the words:

·  Heal the sick · Raise the dead · Cleanse the lepers · Cast out demons · 

 My next pencil mark emphasises the word “glow.” On page 6 we are told that when Mary Baker recovered from a fever as a child, as she later recalled: “...a soft glow of ineffable joy came over me…” And on page 11 we have the phrase “In the glow of evening firelight”. I love it.

 Our author has given us some lovely phrasing. At one point I wrote “evaluating.” The sentence is on pages 123-124: “Her human achievements announced the triumph of her spiritual knowing.”

Page 22: “In proportion to her weaning from human dependence came the necessity for leaning upon the divine.” This thought has been immortalised in the very first words of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.” And her teaching has her students loving the hymn which Jill Gooding gave us in praise of it. (See hymn 519 in the Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-605.)

Joyce Voysey

Marauding fears met with mental poise

Julia Michael's Johnston's language in this month’s book, Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph constantly surprises me: she employs fresh and thoughtful images.

Here's an example from page 141: "Mental pioneer that she was, she dealt courageously with the ragged edges of human thought, where hope and faith meet with marauding fears, and was ever led into safety of realization and calm conviction." 

 

Mental pioneer

What an excellent description of Mary Baker Eddy. Just as Beethoven pioneered the movement of music in stunning new ways, so Mary Baker Eddy pioneered a movement of mental healing.

In her Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, pp. 34:28-9 is the following question and answer regarding the founding of mental healing:

Who is the Founder of mental healing?

The author of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” who discovered the Science of healing embodied in her works. Years of practical proof, through homœopathy, revealed to her the fact that Mind, instead of matter, is the Principle of pathology; and subsequently her recovery, through the supremacy of Mind over matter, from a severe casualty pronounced by the physicians incurable, sealed that proof with the signet of Christian Science. In 1883, a million of people acknowledge and attest the blessings of this mental system of treating disease.

The apostle Paul wrote of the need to watch our thinking (the mental aspect): 

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

 

Courage

- “dealt courageously” describes perfectly the demeanour of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 

Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD. (Psalms 27:14)

When it comes to courage, Mrs. Eddy stresses the moral over the physical:

There is too much animal courage in society and not sufficient moral courage…. Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and to proclaim the right. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 28:32–1, 327:23–24)

 

The ragged edges of human thought

This phrase suggests humanity's untidy, abrasive, stressed state of thought. This reminds me of the metaphor "run ragged" which an online search explains "draws on the visual imagery of being chased, worked, or driven so hard that you are literally or figuratively worn down to threads—looking and feeling as tattered and frayed as an old rag."

Hope and faith meet with marauding fears

My online Oxford dictionary explains “marauding” as: to go about in search of things to steal or people to attack.

 

Safety of realization and calm conviction

This asserts the powerlessness of those “marauding fears” to displace mental poise.

Perhaps this sentence from Science and Health explains the term “realization”:

When we reach our limits of mental endurance, we conclude that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far; but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, and that spiritual energies can neither wear out nor can so-called material law trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality. (p. 387:5)

Mrs. Johnston was a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science based in New York. Her book has been described as “not another biography, but rather a chronicle of the upward path taken by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.” (Christian Science Sentinel – Notices, 14 Sept. 1946).