A Definition of Science and Health

I like this definition of what Science and Health is: “Thus Science and Health would come to be regarded as both a scientific and a denominational textbook, as a manual of healing and a key to the Scriptures, as reasoned argument and revealed truth” (page 289).

I suppose I will read the Appendices!

Thank you to Julie for setting this book for our May read.  I appreciate very much what I have learned from it.

Joyce Voysey

Eddy's attractive animation of conviction

I have made a note “JOY” on page 252 of Mary Baker Eddy – The Years of Discovery – against the Bancroft description of Mrs. Eddy when she was struggled to teach others to heal using her new-found knowledge of God’s infinitude and infinite Love.  It was in the 1870’s.  “When in conversation, the animation she displayed added much to her attractiveness.  It was the animation of conviction, not of excitement or agitation.”

A couple of weeks ago our church’s Second Reader and I had a discussion about why “joy” might  have been included in a passage from that week’s weekly Lesson-Sermon: “What is the model before mortal mind?  Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering?” See Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

Joy just didn’t seem to fit in that company, so I looked up “joy” in Noah Webster’s The Student’s Reference Dictionary (first printed in 1828).  I found: “The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; that excitement of pleasurable feelings which is caused by success, good fortune, the gratification of desire or some good possessed, or by a rational prospect of possessing what we love or desire; gladness; exultation of spirits,” along with meanings one could expect to find like gayety (!Yes!) and happiness.

We were satisfied with the reference to passion and emotion – mortal mind qualities which do indeed fit in with the other more recognisable ones; however, as I write this, I am taken with the “excitement” reference.  S&H doesn’t give it a good press, e.g. the “exciting cause of all suffering.” The whole sentence is: “So-called mortal mind or the mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or the so-called physical senses will get the victory” (p. 230:32).  None of the other five references I found in S&H suggest anything less than mortal mind in action.
 

Joyce Voysey

Genesis One or Genesis Two?

from Joyce Voysey:

I had the feeling that Peel gave a sigh of relief when he got to the point where he could write the title to chapter six – “Discovery 1866.”  Or was it me who felt the relief?

Page 197 has a line which ends with “the only I AM.”  Now, I have pondered this name and meaning of God many times, but the sight of those words set like that somehow brought a little gleam of better understanding.  I realised more clearly that we can never, in truth, say, “I am sick” or “I am poor” or “I am successful” or “I am thirsty.”  God really is the only I AM as the Bible and Science and Health teach us.  S&H’s Glossary has, “I AM.  God; incorporeal and eternal Mind; divine Principle; the only Ego” (Page 588).

I love this phrase on page 198: “the stubborn, cloddish world of material appearances.”  What a wonderful description – the full sentence reads:  “But all around her lay the stubborn, cloddish world of material appearances, waiting to claim her back.”

I’ve always love the definition of “Evening” in the Glossary to S&H – “Evening.  Mistiness of mortal thought; weariness of mortal mind; obscured views; peace and rest.”  Peel identifies this as being connected with what Mrs. Eddy called “the twilight of discovery” - the "Quimby period" in her unfolding of spiritual ideas (page 205).

On that same page, I have a note that she passed through a sort of psychology period through the Quimby connection.  We read, “…she dropped forever the belief that the human mind healed disease and gained the great discovery ‘that God is the only healer and healing Principle, and that Principle is divine not human.’”

I was interested to read, “two Genesis accounts [of creation] as inspired portrayals” (mid page 208).  Had never thought that Genesis Two was inspired.

I’d like to pop in a little poem which Jill Gooding praised in her audio lecture, Prophecy and Healing To-day.  Found on Shared Reflections on christianscience.com

Genesis and you

William R. Beattie

From the January 1997 issue of The Christian Science Journal

Beginning right now, if you could choose
To identify yourself from the point of view
Of Genesis chapter one, or two,
Which would you rather have as you?

Man as formed from the dust of the ground
Is the creation described in Genesis two—
Imperfect, impure, no dominion found,
With woman formed from a lesser view.

Darkness, materialism, sin, and blight
Are all set forth in chapter two;
While chapter one, which speaks of light,
Is uplifting, spiritual, and the only true.

In creation according to Genesis one,
Dominion is given man, goodness too.
Man is God's image and likeness, His very own son,
Both male and female—the spiritual view.

Genesis one, or Genesis two?
The divine must be our point of view.
Matter's child was never true—
By the law of God, chapter one defines you!

Development and Demonstration

I have been pondering the fact that often we refer to nature as feminine and God as masculine and I wondered: do the two make a whole? This little thought had presented itself to me as I read the title of a series of lectures given in 1845-6 by Andrew Jackson Davis, “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind” as mentioned by Peel in our book, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, bottom page 160. 

Then, on page 161, speaking again of Andrew Jackson Davis: His two co-eternal principles – mind and matter, or Father-God and Mother-Nature as he was later to call them – really gave matter the primacy even when he seemed to deny it.

There are always clues to Mrs. Eddy’s eventual development of her themes in Science and Health in what Peel writes about the literature of her day.

On page 178 I have noted that a newspaper report of a talk given by Mrs. Eddy (then Patterson) said this about her public speaking:  This lady is not in the habit of public speaking, at least we should judge so from the tone of her voice which was too feminine to fill the hall.  Perhaps we can gather from that report that the ability to hold an audience and have her voice reach as far as needed - in which she later succeeded - was a demonstration for her, and was one more use for the Science she discovered.

I have perhaps said it before, but I will reiterate: How different was the mental atmosphere in New England from that in Australia at that time.  Not too many thinkers here of the calibre Peel talks about.

Joyce Voysey

Tablets and scrolls get the message and share it

I had a wonder about how Paul physically wrote his messages.  So I found an interview with Alan Millard on Reading and Writing in Jesus time on the website thinkapologetics.com

It seems Paul would have used papyrus.  This is some of what Millard has to say about it:

Papyrus is made from the stem of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. The outer rind is first removed, and the sticky fibrous inner pith is cut lengthwise into thin strips of about 40 cm (16 in) long. The strips are then placed side by side on a hard surface with their edges slightly overlapping, and then another layer of strips is laid on top at a right angle. The strips may have been soaked in water long enough for decomposition to begin, perhaps increasing adhesion, but this is not certain. The two layers possibly were glued together.^[14] While still moist, the two layers are hammered together, mashing the layers into a single sheet. The sheet is then dried under pressure. After drying, the sheet is polished with some rounded object, possibly a stone or seashell or round hardwood.^[15]

Sheets could be cut to fit the obligatory size or glued together to create a longer roll. A wooden stick would be attached to the last sheet in a roll, making it easier to handle.^[16] To form the long strip scrolls required, a number of such sheets were united, placed so all the horizontal fibres parallel with the roll's length were on one side and all the vertical fibres on the other. Normally, texts were first written on the recto, the lines following the fibres, parallel to the long edges of the scroll. Secondarily, papyrus was often reused, writing across the fibres on the verso.^[4] Pliny the Elder describes the methods of preparing papyrus in his Naturalis Historia.

And about how it was used:

THE TURNING: So, let’s imagine if we had a time machine, and we could go back to the time of Christ. If someone were taking notes about Christ after they met him, what form would those take?

MILLARD: I think probably they would have written the notes on little wooden tablets coated with wax, which were the common notebooks of the time, often small enough to hold in the palm of one hand. You scratch the writing on with a pointed stylus and either transfer it to a leather or papyrus roll or if you don’t want it, simply smooth over the wax and use it again. I can envisage people taking notes like that. Some of them might have been priestly people, religious people, who sent their information to Jerusalem to priests there who were opposed to Jesus. Others might have been people like the soldiers whose son or slave Jesus healed and he might have sent a letter to his brother serving in the army in another part of the world, telling him what had happened. I think too, that the people who heard and saw the remarkable things that went on made notes for their own benefit or for their family’s benefit and some notes could have formed the basis for some of the Gospel writer’s works.

THE TURNING: I guess for most of us, we assume that the book, that thing with pages that you open up, that’s got a cover on each side is something that’s been around forever. But in the 1st century, are we really talking about a book as we know it?

MILLARD: No, no, we’re talking about a leather or papyrus roll or scroll. The Dead Sea scrolls, for example, are simply long rolls of leather. The most complete one is the copy of the Book of Isaiah from the Hebrew Bible and it’s about twenty-four feet long, eight meters long. So, to read the book, you have to unscroll the leather with one hand and roll it up with the other and a long book, like Isaiah was a long roll, the average roll would only be twelve to fifteen feet long. The Isaiah roll is about eleven inches high. We shouldn’t imagine these ancient rolls were as big as the scrolls you see in a modern synagogue for example. Some of them were much smaller, only five or six inches high and you could quite easily put one in the fold of a coat, cloak and carry it along with you.

The full interview is very informative. http://chab123.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/reading-and-writing-in-the-time-of-jesus%E2%80%9D-by-alan-millard/

Joyce Voysey

 

Self-evident

On page 393 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy has written: Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, or be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation.

How interesting, that term, self-evident. 

I like the story of how that term came to be in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.  The initial draft, by Thomas Jefferson, read "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  Franklin's revisions were slight but crucial.  He struck out "sacred and undeniable" and wrote, instead, "self-evident." (p. 183 Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore).

Julie Swannell

Education of women

I like what Peel writes about the education of women in New Hampshire in Mrs. Eddy’s youth.  The note at the back of the book (refers to page 54) is instructive:

            Many...were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford Academy or Ipswich Seminary half the year, by working in the mills the other half…they were improving themselves and preparing for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and reading standard books, by attending lectures and classes of their own getting up, and by meeting each other for reading and conversation.

 See page 318 - note 75 which quotes Lucy Larcom's "A New England Girlhood"

The part that grabbed my particular attention was their going to college for half a year and working for the other to gain the finances necessary.  Surely this could be a plan for to-day's University students rather than accruing huge debts during their study years.

And as I read her brother Albert’s writings I hear echoes in Mrs. Eddy’s.  Indeed, it is noticeable that every event in her life seems to have been a lesson which has found a way into her writings to instruct the reader.  I thought of this on reading of her brief experience of life in the South with her husband George Glover and felt it is illustrative of this.  She saw “sermons in stones, and good in everything”, a quote from Shakespeare's As You Like It on page 176 of Science and Health. Eddy quotes from the same Shakespeare play on page 66 of S&H: Thou art right, immortal Shakespeare, great poet of humanity: Sweet are the uses of adversity Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
 

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”― William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

I find myself wondering just who Peel thought would be his audience for this book.  It is very literary and one sees a continuation of the theme of his first book about Christian Science, Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture - first published 1958.  Our present book was published in 1966.  My copy of Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture has a picture of Robert Peel on its dust cover.  It went to 7 printings. 

Joyce Voysey

Woman's influence

Page 6.  The paragraph beginning “She represented” speaks of woman’s place in a Christian church: a woman remained silent in church and she was not invited to read the Scripture lesson or offer up the prayer at family devotions.  But she thought, she felt, she influenced – like “the gentle dew and cheerful light.”  In her own subversively simple way she might "undermine the curse on Adam’s issue.” 

 

I had made a note in the margin: “Christian Science has transformed all of the Christian religions.”  How different the Protestant churches are to-day, maybe even the Catholic ones.  This, it seems to me, is the direct effect of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery of the Science of Christianity.

Which makes me wonder about Islam: does it need a Mary Baker Eddy to free it from tradition?

 

Joyce Voysey

Escaping persecution - the Church "disestablished"

My first stumbling block was on page 3 – the word “disestablished” re "the Church in New Hampshire".  So I looked it up.  This I found interesting (from First Freedom Center http://www.firstfreedom.org/education/documents/Disestablishment-Plan.pdf):

FREEDOM OF RELIGION: DISESTABLISHMENT

INTRODUCTION:  Many of the colonists who first settled in North America came

"a revolutionary interpretation of the Scriptures"

Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy - The Years of Discovery

The first thing that took my eye was in the dust cover blurb at the front of the book: “The outstanding value of the study, according to the Literary Journal is its “representation of the growth and the development of a revolutionary interpretation of the Scriptures.””  Isn’t that grand?

Roots and Shoots - Bow, New Hampshire

• Robert Peel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel_(Christian_Science)) was born in London, England in 1909 and passed in Boston, USA, 1992.  In his writing, we encounter a deep thinker, a tireless and thorough researcher, a searcher for the truth.  When Peel’s books were published, they apparently caused quite a stir for many Christian Science readers.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing!  Eddy herself wrote that (SH 540:9)

The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream.

Bow: 1821

Chapter one of our book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery reaches over broad territory and some readers may feel out of their depth from the start.  I have taken up my ruler and underlined the names of the characters mentioned, as well as statements that take my fancy.  In this way, along with help from my trusty dictionary, I have been able to keep apace somewhat. 

It is a fascinating read.  We learn

Paul - on love, and law

A little last word from me about Galatians:

I hadn’t realised that “Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself” was in Galatians (5:14).  I went hunting and found it is also in Matt 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom 13:9; James 2:8.  Of course, these refer back to the law of Moses, the unadulterated law, which Paul says is the fulfilling of the whole law (Gal. 5:14).

Joyce Voysey