Three Hebrew boys and thought trends

Much is heard today about medical conditions, including those of a mental nature. It is therefore interesting to read in the very first testimony in Chapter XVIII of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (SH) by Mary Baker Eddy titled Fruitage, that on reading this book the testifier--who was suffering from rheumatic trouble---"realized that the mental condition was what needed correcting, and that the Spirit of truth which inspired this book was [his/her] physician." (Emphasis added.) 

Wondering what sort of mental condition one might need to correct, I found a passage from Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 where she reminds her students about the "animal element ... of ... rivalry, jealousy, envy, revenge ..." (See pp. 280:26–11.)

We may wonder about the mental state of the three Hebrew boys (maybe including being fearless, undaunted, unbowed) and the mental state which surrounded them (authoritative, proscriptive) -- see Daniel 3: 14-27 -- both before and after they emerged unscathed from the king's fiery punishment. 

This reminds me of a passage in Science and Health:

One whom I rescued from seeming spiritual oblivion, in which the senses had engulfed him, wrote to me: “I should have died, but for the glorious Principle you teach, — supporting the power of Mind over the body and showing me the nothingness of the so-called pleasures and pains of sense. The treatises I had read and the medicines I had taken only abandoned me to more hopeless suffering and despair. Adherence to hygiene was useless. Mortal mind needed to be set right. The ailment was not bodily, but mental, and I was cured when I learned my way in Christian Science.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 382:24)

And so the testifiers we hear from in Fruitage speak of changed mental states, of being lifted into "a new heaven and a new earth" (Rev. 21: 1) as was John, exiled on the island of Patmos, but with thought soaring to new realms of freedom from death, sorrow, crying and pain.

Julie Swannell

African-American Marietta Webb and other cases of healing

 The Mary Baker Eddy Library series Women of History gives the history of “A Remarkable Case” found in the Chapter "Fruitage" on pp. 612-614 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. The testifier was Marietta Webb. She was the first African-American to be listed in The Christian Science Journal. I would love to include the whole MBE Library article here, but you can click HERE instead to read it at its source. (Ed. It's worth taking some moments to read this.)

It is so good to have the full name and even a photo of Mrs. Webb. She is seen at the age of 86 reading without glasses. The testimony includes the fact that she was healed of what a leading oculist said were eyes that were in a dreadful condition and which would always require glasses – through her early reading of the textbook.

This testimony is one I particularly recall because of her comment about borrowing Science and Health for her initial reading of the book. “I never saw any one part so reluctantly with a book as my friend did with her copy of the textbook.”

Another testimony in Fruitage speaks of borrowing the book for 2 hours a day. The lady read a borrowed Science and Health from 10 o’clock till dinner time, then borrowed it for 2 hours a day for eight days and was healed of consumption. (page 624)

Yet another spoke of having the opportunity of reading Science and Health a few minutes day for about a week and healed thereby!

I wonder if I could part with my one and only copy of Science and Health for a needy friend. At this time it would not be a problem – there are many copies of the book in my home, from tiny travel-sized ones to a big reader’s. (I used to have two of those when I was a First Reader in my church.) PS I also have Science and Health in German.

I have read the testimony beginning on page 624 of Fruitage many, many times, but never twigged to the fact that it must have been written by a school student. The testifier says she and her mother began the reading of Science and Health together. (I say “she” but there is nothing to indicate that is the fact.) She says it seemed to her that it was something she had always believed. How different that is from some of the testimonies which say the person could not understand what they were reading but that they persisted.

As one who found Christian Science in a public library (first through Lyman Powell’s biography, and, on its recommendation, Science and Health), I am interested in how each one of the testifiers obtained their first copy of the book. I am going to make a list...

That sounds like a big undertaking. I will make a start – The completed list goes on for 4 pages, so I will not include it here.

Joyce Voysey

Read / Pause / Apply -- to meet your present need

The following came in as a comment to yesterday's post but I thought our readers might miss it unless it was a proper "post", so here it is:

Thank you, Julie, for that lovely post. Full of gratitude, sincerity and expectancy of good. 

My first impression in this month's reading was in relation to the introduction to this precious chapter of Science and Health, Fruitage. I noted that if we have doubts as to the legitimacy of what is to come we can apply to the Editor. How interesting. There is really no way we can apply to the original Editor who compiled the substance of the chapter, but we can apply to the office of Editor, which to-day would be the Christian Science Publishing Society. 

How important it is in Christian Science to honour the office rather than the person holding that office. For instance, we honour the office of First Reader when we give gratitude for the readings from the Bible and Science and Health at Wednesday evening Testimony Meetings rather than the person in that office. And we honour the office of Christian Science practitioner when we show our appreciation of a healing accomplished through that office. 

I like to remind myself of a direction from Mary Baker Eddy on the reading of Science and Health. It was directed to one student, and no doubt was of particular help to the student, Frank Walter Gale. Mrs. Eddy had sent Mr. Gale a copy of a new edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and Mr. Gale records that she sent this note with it: "In reading my revised edition that is, by the way, published this week, there is no special direction requisite. The general rule is to commence with the first chapter, read slowly, and pause as you read to apply certain portions which meet your present need, -- to thought that will carry them out in action. The book is complete in itself, it is a teacher and healer" (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Vol. I, expanded edition, p. 219). 

I have been reading these testimonies in Science and Health since 1961, and have at every reading been inspired by with the inspired records The number of testimonies which record healing of eyesight is remarkable. I must count them again. One of my early copies of the book was marked as I numbered them. So precious! I will not tell you the number now, but will mark the book I am reading for this blog - a tiny hardback, lovely edition. 

Joyce Voysey 

PS I had no idea I would write so much when I started this comment! 

Free as a bird

After my mother found Christian Science, we children were enrolled in the Christian Science Sunday school. We also sometimes attended Wednesday Testimony Meetings. I cannot recall a single testimony, but I do remember the spirit of joy present during those meetings. These days, testimonies are shared in person, in writing, and over zoom but the weekly testimony meetings continue to offer a deep sincerity, joy and gratitude. Many a tear and many a laugh have given deep meaning to the holy experience of testifying to the effect of the healing Christ, Truth in our midst. In the Church Manual (p. 47), it says: "Testimony in regard to the healing of the sick is highly important. More than a mere rehearsal of blessings, it scales the pinnacle of praise and illustrates the demonstration of Christ, 'who healeth all thy diseases' (Psalm 103:3). The Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, would be of no use unless we could put their truths into practice.

The eighty-three testimonies in the back of Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (chapter title 'Fruitage') offer proof of its effectiveness as a practical guide to healing. They also offer a glimpse of how different people have approached the reading of this unique text.

One early student shared her experience like this: "I bought my first copy of Science and Health from [Mrs. Eddy]...In my search in reading the book to see how Jesus healed, I was perfectly healed of a complication of diseases." (Victoria H. Sargent, quoted in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy Vol II, expanded edition p 32.) (Emphasis added.)

Janette E. Weller remembered her initial reading like this: "In March 1884, I first heard of Christian Science and its healing work. I immediately purchased a copy of the seventh edition of Science and Health (SH), by Mary B. G. Eddy, and read it through carefully, giving most of my time for three weeks to its study. I had not heard that the reading of the book healed the sick, but before these three weeks had passed, I awoke to find that all the claims of disease and pain from which I had suffered for more than twenty years had vanished and that I was free as a bird" (ibid, p. 40).

Septimus Hanna and his wife had a slightly different experience. When Mrs. Hanna received a gifted copy of SH from her father, she felt she was too busy to read it and so recommended that her husband read it first. When he soon laid it aside as incomprehensible, she began its study. Hanna writes: "...as was her habit when she read books in which she became intensely interested, she read late into the night, or rather into the wee small hours. ...there was an almost instant change in her looks and manner...she was doing things that I knew she could not do before she began to read that book. ...Two or three months went by before I was interested enough to make another effort to read the book, but when I did so, I began to see in it [the] reasonable and logical presentation of God, man, and the universe for which I had hoped but had not before found. Yet I did not take up the serious study of the subject for about a year after this time" (ibid, p. 229-230).

In this month's edition of The Christian Science Journal, Thomas Mitchinson ("Read This Book" CSJ Sept 2020) reminds us that Mrs. Eddy "followed her own advice" i.e. "Read this book from beginning to end. Study it, ponder it" (SH p. 559). Eddy's student William R. Rathvon explains that she "was a close student of her own writings, the margin of her copy of Science and Health being sprinkled with pencilings, comments, cross-references, and correlative texts" (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Vol II, expanded edition, p. 555). 

A grateful reader from the US wrote: "My first reading of Science and Health was without understanding. I was full of darkness and gloom, and it was laid aside for a time. The good seed had been sown, however, and erelong the reading was resumed, and with such interest that my afflictions disappeared "like mist before the morning sun" (SH p. 622-623). 

And so we today can see for ourselves the effect of reading Science and Health as we "take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel" and "eat it up" (Rev. 10: 8, 9).  

Julie Swannell