Book Club March, 2018 – Sibyl Wilbur's The Life of Mary
Baker Eddy
Now here is a book with a history! Robert Peel has given us quite a lot of that
history in his Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, the third of his
fine trilogy on Mrs Eddy's life and work. It seems important to me to have this information under one's belt, so
to speak, either before or after reading the Sibyl Wilbur's book.
As with all of Peel's books, it is not enough to read the
body of the work, one must also take in the end notes. (I have noted before in this blog that my
copy of The Years of Authority is falling to pieces, much marked and
notated. It has taught me a lot over the
years – it was published in 1977, the first of the trilogy to reach
Australia. Mine was an early purchase; I
had been a student of Christian Science for six years by 1977.)
Anyway, back to Wilbur. O'Brien was the author's married name and her series about Mrs. Eddy
would possibly have been written under that name. This series was printed in Human Life
in 1905.
Mrs. O'Brien succeeded in getting an interview with Mrs.
Eddy, but she felt she was intruding on her and retired to send a series of
questions for Mrs. Eddy to answer in her own time.
O'Brien would eventually become known as Sibyl Wilbur. She seemed to have been indefatigable in her
efforts to get the facts of Mrs. Eddy's life from living witnesses.
To quote from her letter to Mrs. Eddy of May 22, 1907, in
turn quoted by Peel (p. 274):
It is a
remarkable experience which I am passing through, following in your footsteps, observing the impressions which your acts
made upon others and their acts upon your life...I don't know how it is done. I
don't know what force or power accomplishes it, but every one of your so-called enemies receives me,
answers my questions, and in some way confuses himself
in his own falsehoods, or, with amazing frankness, tells the truth. Of these witnesses there are those who have sworn to other statements, and when
I have addressed them on certain
matters they have allowed the truth to escape, as it were, inadvertently....
It seems Mrs. Eddy did not fully approve of the book. She felt the time was not right and the right
author had not yet appeared. She
found the book too adulatory of her, and took steps to have the author withdraw
it from sale.
Wilbur's work is the first Eddy biography published. It has come
to be regarded as a valuable record and it still available for purchase or loan at Christian Science Reading Rooms. The most recent edition has a beautiful photo of Mrs. Eddy in a stunning gown.
Yes. I have begun to
read the book, but there was a need to get the foregoing in place first. And, the author has me ready to find out more
about Renan and his Life of Christ which Wilbur refers to so strongly in
her Introduction. She depreciates
his methods and plumps for that of St. Mark and his gospel of Christ.
Joyce Voysey
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