1853: a turning point

I have always found that reading about Mary Baker Eddy provides me with inspiration and uplift. Why?

It occurs to me that her early years, as recounted by Robert Peel in his Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, are of special significance because of where those difficult years later led. This offers great encouragement. 

Others may have had similar experiences - of loss, frail health, widowhood and poverty. But Mary had within her a burning hope that could not be extinguished. Peel hints at this on page 39 where he contrasts her brother Albert's "common hope of the Enlightenment [of the inevitable victory of truth over error]" with Mary's "conviction that rose like a rocket from her own insurgent heart".  

While "Mary Baker was always engaged with life" (ibid. p. 53), Mary Glover’s loss of her husband in 1844 (p. 98-99), then five years later her mother and her fiancé (p. 130), followed by her brother-in-law (p. 132), surely tested that engagement. Meanwhile, her very active six-year-old son George was no longer welcome in the newly re-married Mark Baker's household (p. 134).

Living with her older sister was not ideal either, though she spent two years in that household after leaving the paternal home. But young George was not welcome there either. 

Peel explains that the emerging friendship with her dentist, Dr. Daniel Patterson, in 1853 would provide a turning point -- “an entirely new phase of her life” (p. 150).

Julie Swannell

The Mary Baker Eddy Library has a helpful article on Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to dentistry.