Looking up

In my last blog I recorded Mrs. Eddy as having said, “I looked upward.” I believe I have read this statement or one like it in at least one part of our book under discussion, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer by von Fettweis and Warneck.

Then I noticed that Jesus was also recorded as having looked up to heaven. See Mark 7:34, 6:41 and Matthew 14:19 with Luke 9:16*. The last was at the feeding of the 5,000 men + women and children – “And looking up to heaven, he blessed…” I am sure some of the other biographies of Mary Baker Eddy record her doing so.

How both Jesus and Mary Baker blessed, through their looking up and away from matter to the healing Christ.

One of the remarkable things in the book is the number of times we read of Mrs. Eddy being busy revising her book Science and Health. On page 206: “Mrs. Eddy devoted herself throughout 1902 to reading the new revision from beginning to end. As a result, she corrected and standardized the capitalization of words relating to God, removed repetitious sentences and paragraphs and added a little new material.”**

Indeed, she wrote to Albert F. Conant, who was compiling a Concordance to her book, “My ‘last changes of Science and Health’ may continue so long as I read the book!” (p. 206).

Page 208 contains a facsimile of Science & Health’s page 232. The compositor at the printing house would have to decipher her many hand-written revisions. A challenge to any typist too. I was one, and my husband was a compositor.

On page 210, there is a paragraph (in a letter from Mary Baker Eddy to a practitioner) which perhaps paraphrases the purpose of her book:

“Demonstration is the whole of Christian Science, nothing else proves it, nothing else will save it and continue it with us. God has said this—and Christ Jesus has proved it.”

 Joyce Voysey

*And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.
(Mark 7:34)

And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all.
(Mark 6:41)

And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
(Matt. 14:19)

Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.
(Luke 9:16)

**Ed. I found this in the MBE Library at https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/the-140th-anniversary-of-science-and-health/

"Since the first edition, Science and Health—retitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1883—went through more than 400 revisions, ranging from minor changes to major reworkings of the text. Eddy constantly reshaped and refined its message, striving to make her textbook on healing clearer and stronger."

Resident physician

At a recent testimony meeting, a friend shared Mary Baker Eddy’s raising of Calvin Frye from death.

I subsequently decided to look up all the references to Mr. Frye in our book Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer by von Fettweis and Warneck. After resisting the work for a while, I found the task was actually easy – there is an alphabetical index at the back of the book and Calvin Frye’s entries appear on page 607.

In the book, Mr. Frye (1845-1917) is generally referred to as Eddy’s “personal secretary” (e.g. p. 52) a position demanding discipline, diligence, energy, attention to detail, trustworthiness, and a deep love of the cause of Christian Science. He served in this role from 1882 to 1910 (p. 446).

But, of special interest to me was Mrs. Eddy’s reference (in a 1903 letter to the Christian Science Board of Directors) to Mr. Frye as “resident physician at our College on Columbus Avenue, Boston”, one who had “stood by [her] side to help [the Cause of Christian Science] 21 years” and “one of its oldest actors and faithful laborers in the vineyard of our Lord” (p. 447).

The term “resident physician” I had not heard before.

The book also shares several distinct healings of Calvin Frye during his time with Mrs. Eddy. I’ll try to gather them up here.

1891

An occurrence was witnessed and recounted by Eddy’s student Captain Eastaman to Arthur Maxfield. Maxfield related that after ushering Eastaman into Eddy’s house, Frye lost his footing and “suddenly pitched head first to the foot of the stairs, apparently with a broken neck caused by the fall” (p. 168).

Aroused by the noise, Mrs. Eddy appeared at the “head of the stairs and said what is the matter?” She thrice instructed him to “get up”. He did. “Calvin Frye’s diaries show that his daily work for Mrs. Eddy went on completely uninterrupted and unhampered by this incident” (ibid).

1903

John Salchow writes: “It was my privilege to witness a healing at Pleasant View in 1903 which was the result of Mrs. Eddy’s own understanding of the truth” (p. 365). Salchow’s sister (Mrs. Eddy’s maid at the time) had found Mr. Frye dead. Salchow checked and saw Frye “crumpled up at his desk”. Shortly, Mrs. Eddy came to Frye’s room and asked “over and over again, ‘Calvin, do you hear me?’” Finally, after about five minutes (according to Salchow’s recollection) Calvin replied faintly, “Yes, Mother, I hear you.”

1905

One evening, “George Kinter, a worker in Mrs. Eddy’s home”* was instructed by Eddy to see why Frye had not responded to her call. “George found [Frye] slumped in a chair…. he had no pulse, he was stone cold—and rigid.” When Mrs. Eddy was “informed of this, [she] came immediately to the bedroom and began at once to treat him, … [She] continually denied the error and declared the Truth with such vehemence and eloquence for a full hour, as I never had heard on any other occasion…” (p. 256).

The report continues: “After an hour, Calvin moved a little and then spoke in very low tones: ‘Don’t call me back. Let me go, I am so tired.’ To which Mrs. Eddy replied, ‘Oh, Yes, -- We shall persist in calling you back, for you have not been away. You have only been dreaming…’” (p. 257).

Date not identified

Clara Shannon recorded a different incident involving Calvin Frye. When Ms. Shannon went to his room, she “saw him lying on his back on the carpet, apparently lifeless” (p. 363). Mrs. Eddy came as soon as she was told about it. Shannon recalled the “tenderness” and “expressions of love” uttered by Eddy, as well as her “severe” rebuke of “the error that seemed to be attacking him” in her rousing metaphysical treatment.

 Shannon recounts that to her plea “Oh, Mother! Couldn’t you let him sit down a few minutes?” Mrs. Eddy replied: “No, if he sits down he may not waken again—he must be aroused—we mustn’t let him die—he is not quite awake yet!” (pp. 363-4). Soon, Mrs. Eddy made him laugh heartily, before telling him to “go back to his room and his ‘watch’” (ibid).

The postludes to this experience seem especially important:

1.     “[Mrs. Eddy] explained to me [Clara Shannon] that when you speak the truth to anyone, if the truth you speak causes him to laugh, cry, or get angry, you have reached the thought that needed correction” (ibid).

2.     Miss Shannon later asked Calvin what he was doing when they thought he was dead. “He replied at once, ‘I was in the pantry, eating custard pie’” (p. 364).

Nov. 9, 1908

Irving Tomlinson related an incident when three students “strove to restore” Calvin Frye, who was “unconscious and apparently in a death stupor” (p. 366). Mrs. Eddy had her students bring him to her, sensing the urgency. She “commanded [him], with the voice of authority, to awaken from his false dream. At first she met with no response, but this did not discourage her. She redoubled her efforts and fairly shouted to him her command that he awake. In a few moments he gave evidence of life, partly opened his eyes, and slightly moved his head. Seeking to rouse him, Mrs. Eddy said, ‘Calvin, don’t commit self-murder.’ He replied ‘I don’t want to live.’

“‘Disappoint your enemies and live,’ she commanded. ‘Say that you do want to stay and help me.’

“Then he took his first stand and answered, ‘Yes, I will stay.’”

The account relates his full restoration.

Our book identifies this account as appearing in Irving Tomlinson’s Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy: Amplified Edition, pp. 64-66; corroborated in Adam Dickey, Memoirs, pp. 107-112. (See p. 367.)

I love how the patient – Mr. Frye – was empowered to make the choice to live.

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
(Deut. 30:19)

Julie Swannell

 

*George Kinter was employed by Mrs. Eddy to “assist Mr. Frye” who, she told him “had too much to do”!! (p. 466).

The healing of the nations

 I found a special treasure: Mary Baker Eddy talking about the 91^st Psalm. It begins on page 192 of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer by Yvonne Cache von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck. The substance was given in an address at a meeting of church members in Concord. She said she considered Psalm 91 to be one of foundations of the Christian Science religion. She said that it “contains more practical theological and pathological truth than any other collection of the same number of words in human language except the Sermon on the Mount of the great Galilean and hillside Teacher.”

The book’s account finishes near the end of page 193 with:

1.     The secret place of the Most High is spiritual Love.

2.     The way thereunto is Christ Truth, but the way to find this Way is:

1)               The knowledge of God.

2)               The understanding of God.

I have read up to the end of Chapter 14, now I need to go back to Chapter 6, Teacher, counselor, author, to see what I have marked for possible comment.

Page 118-9. “Mrs. Eddy saw great danger in what she later described as “the mistake of believing in mental healing, claiming full faith in the divine Principle, and saying, ‘I am a Christian Scientist,’ while doing unto others what we would resist to the hilt if done unto ourselves.’”

Page 131. The healing of Warren Choate: Mrs. Eddy healed Warren after his mother had failed. Mrs. Choate asked how Mrs. Eddy had treated her son.

Mrs. Eddy’s reply:

“The only thought I had was “Warren Choate, your mother governs here with the Truth.”
Mrs. Choate, you don’t govern that child morally when he is well, so you can’t heal him when he is ill. You have done all that could be done except that you had neglected to handle the moral question, and this must be handled in every case whether it be an adult or a small child. You never made him mind, and if you give him a command you don’t insist upon his carrying it out.”

Surely a huge lesson to parents.

Page 170. Rules based on the law of God. Mrs. Eddy wrote rules for the government of her church including its branches. We now have them in The Manual of The Mother Church. Mrs. said that if the members obeyed these rules, their human opinions would have no place and consequently could not inhibit their love for one another.

When I read this: “Meekness was a quality Mrs. Eddy especially valued. She taught that it is essential in the healing practice” (p. 184), I thought of all the meek practitioners and teachers of Christian Science living in the United States of America. It comforted me somewhat about the current state of affairs in that blessed country. Blessed because it is where Christian Science was presented to mankind through the work of Mary Baker Eddy, a citizen of that country.

Meekness and timidity are not equal.

Page 188 tells us that Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 comprised almost all of her contributions to the Journal. What a treasure, as we students all know.

I love the way Chapter 14 finishes (p. 194):

“The book of Genesis in the Bible says that God gives man dominion “over all the earth”. Mrs. Eddy shared the revelation she received from divine Mind in her book Science and Health so that her own age, and ages to come, could demonstrate that dominion through Christian healing. After that, God led her to found a Church based on that revelation and to structure The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in such a way that its activities could bring about “the healing of the nations.””

Joyce Voysey

Moral and mental aspects of healing

A couple of points from my reading of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer by von Fettweis and Warneck.

THE MORAL ASPECT

Chapter Moral Science (p.  81). The moral aspect of Mrs. Eddy’s system or “science” set it apart from all other healing methods. She saw it as the most important part. In the book, this is illustrated by this report from the Boston Traveller in 1900.

. . . Remarkable as was the man’s physical healing, even more remarkable was the transformation in his thought and life. His wife told Mrs. [Glover] a few days later that she had never before seen him [hug] his children as other fathers did, but on the night of his recovery he called them to him, and taking them in his arms he told them that he loved them; and with tears rolling down his cheeks he said to his wife, “I am going to be a better man.” It is not strange that the happy wife said to Mrs. [Glover], “Oh, how I thank you for restoring my husband to health, but more than all, I am grateful for what you have done for him morally and spiritually.”

The physical healing was of enteritis and bowel stoppage.

In a similar vein we have Samuel Putnam Bancroft (pp. 87-88) writing in 1870:

Mrs. [Glover] did not claim to be a teacher of religion, however, but of a method of healing the sick without the use of medicine. That was what induced us to study with her. The object of some was to regain health; of others, to commercialize the knowledge acquired. They considered it a sound business proposition. Her religious views, while not concealed, were not capitalized. Later, we learned that our success or failure in healing depended on the purity of our lives, as well as on the instruction she gave us.

Advice to possible students: Don’t come into it for the money! Although, at that stage of Mrs. Eddy’s experience she needed to get her message out.

Bancroft again on page 88. He asked how they should metaphysically view the process of teaching. In part she wrote:

When I teach science it is not woman that addresses man, it the principle and soul bringing out its idea. . . My scholars may learn from me what they could not learn from the same words if uttered by another with less wisdom than even my “grain of mustard seed,” hence, it is not the words, but the amount of soul that comes forth to destroy error.

I feel that this could, to a lesser degree, apply to Christian Science lectures.

I had wondered if the Puritan angle would be carried on through the book, but I do not think so.

HEALING OF INSANITY

There was another item I wanted to comment on: the healing by Mrs. Eddy of an insane man. She explained (in part):

He took a chair, and poised it, but I looked upward and he dropped the chair, and asked if I had something to say to him. I said I had, all from the spiritual side, “The first thing is you have no disease of the brain; you need never have been in the insane hospital” (pp. 83-4).

I was taken with the phrase “disease of the brain.” I reasoned that there are other conditions which could be classified as such – dementia, amnesia. The internet tells me that in 2019, one in every eight people in the world live with a mental disorder, with anxiety, depression.

From the Christian Science viewpoint is not every physical disorder a claim of mental disorder?

I typed a few statements of Truth about brain:

•     Brain is not mind. Mortal mind is not intelligence. Only Mind is mind.
•      Any info coming from brain is false. It is brain that sees a deranged mind.
•       All disease emanates from brain which is the theoretical mind in matter.
•       Brain is matter. Matter is no thing.

Joyce Voysey

Practical Christian Science

I read the Introduction to Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (MBE:CH)  by Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck (Amplified Edition) a few days ago. This morning, in Prelude, I am delighted to have presented to me a definition of a Puritan (maybe especially, one living in the USA).

But first of all, the writers point out how Puritanism influenced Mary Baker Eddy’s religious experience – “how she thought and lived, how she sought, drew near to, and understood God. This Puritan approach to God was a motivating force behind both her private and public life” (page 15).

Then the writers point out that we must discard our vision of the stereotypical Puritan of rigid extremism.

We read that “‘practicality’ gives a clearer, more precise picture of the Puritan, for whom fulfilling one’s duty to God was the whole purpose of existence. Nothing was more important. Every detail of one’s life could be dealt with correctly only through discernment of the divine will, and this discernment was not to be determined intellectually, but received directly from God Himself through spiritual communion” (ibid pages 15-16).

This reminded me of book I have just finished reading, The Hour of Sunlight, by Sami Al Jundi and Jen Marlowe. Sami is a Palestinian living in the Old City of Jerusalem. I found similarities with the Puritan way of living and the way Sami’s family lived their lives. Incidentally, both of Sami’s parents were blind: he and his siblings were their “eyes” when they went out of the house. Now this is interesting. I cannot find any passages which I can quote to illustrate that impression. I guess one really has to read the book.

Then, back to MBE:CH, on that same page 16, there is a paragraph which talks about religion being both an Art and a Trade.

About trade: “a Trade is not learned by words, but by experience: and a man hath learned a Trade, not when he can talk of it, but when he can work according to his Trade” (Englishman Richard Sibbes, a seventeenth century Puritan preacher). The writers of our book comment that “it would be hard to find a better description than this of Mary Baker Eddy’s expectation for Christian Science and its adherents.”

I move to the present to tell of a man who has just recently been the recipient of an AOM for service to the aeronautical engineering industry.

It started when he built a small light plane while attending university to learn civil engineering. The plane flew and served him for many years. Meantime, he extended his university tenure to aeronautical engineering. That done, he started to build a business. This grew to employ around 40 engineers. They mostly came directly from universities and received outstanding instruction and guidance. Now well established, he saw a need for a certain type of plane especially designed for Australian conditions. He designed it (no doubt giving his employees great experience). And he built it himself! This is no small light plane but a 10-seater.

I hope the reader can see my point about this man’s Trade. Practicality indeed!

All that and I am only on the second page of Prelude!

Joyce Voysey

Ed. I note that the word "practical" appears 74 times in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. Some of these references come from readers who attest to the practicality of Christian Science in their lives.

Touching lives by our spirituality

 As I open my copy of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (Amplified Edition) by Yvonne Cache von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck this morning, I like what it says on the very first page: "Many historical records related to Mary Baker Eddy's life, including those used in this biography, are held at The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston, Massachusetts. The Library's collections are available for public research."

While I have not visited the MBE Library in person, its rich resources are freely available online at https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/  and anyone can ask questions if they can't find answers already on the site. 

So, it's reassuring that our book this month has used those resources in its compilation.

I was interested to read the quotes from Phillips Brooks* and Mary Baker Eddy on the following page, and I wondered about Mr. Brooks. Wikipedia gives this brief summary: "Phillips Brooks was an American Episcopal clergyman and author, long the Rector of Boston's Trinity Church..." He is also mentioned in a post on The Mary Baker Eddy Library's site about WWII internees in Hong Kong because he wrote the words to the hymn "O little town of Bethlehem" which some internees had hand-copied for their church services during that harrowing time. (See A Remarkable Story of Persistence.) Readers will enjoy reading this.

Here are the two quotes which appear on one of the unnumbered early pages of our book:

God has not given us vast learning to solve all the problems, or unfailing wisdom to direct all the wanderings of our brothers' lives; but He has given to every one of us the power to be spiritual, and by our spirituality to lift and enlarge and enlighten the lives we touch. -- Phillips Brooks

The secret of my life is in the above. -- Mary Baker Eddy

Let us now open our hearts to that "power to be spiritual" as we read this volume about Mary Baker Eddy and how her life's work has touched and blessed so many lives, then and now.

Julie Swannell

* A search under "Phillips Brooks" on https://jsh.christianscience.com/console yields 270 results! He was a very much respected and quoted theologian. One article which mentions Brooks is "The next 90 years" by Mark Swinney (See Christian Science Sentinel 27th December 2010. If you don't have access to jsh-online, feel free to call your local Christian Science Reading Room to access this article for you.)