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."