Lovely phrasing

I have to report that I have finished reading Julia Michael Johnston's book, Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph. As I read, I put pencil marks next to things I wished to comment on.

The first one was on page 2. Speaking of the coming of what was to become to be known as Christian Science, Johnston says:

This fulfillment came to the reappearing of Christianity in its primitive strength of the first centuries when the sick as well as the sinning were healed by divine means, and the raising of the dead, in the words of Gibbon, “was very far from being esteemed as an uncommon event” (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon).

I read Gibbon’s book many years ago. It is referred to in the Christian Science periodicals.  (See for instance “The Divine Origin of Christian Science” by Lewis R. Works, in the June 15, 1907, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.)

The book was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Through the Internet, I have purchased and received a copy of the abridged edition (Penguin Classics) of Gibbon’s work. (This is the same edition as came to me among my brother’s things following his death in World War II.) It is quite a thick book, but the part about Christianity is quite easily found from the Index. It’s Chapter VIII: “The progress of the Christian Religion, and the sentiments, manners, numbers, and condition of the primitive Christians – Persecutions of the primitive Christians”.

So… In the subheading “The Miraculous Powers of the Early Church", we find this:

“...from the time of the apostles and their first disciples, [Christianity] has claimed an uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead.”

Students of Christian Science will see a connection in those attributes. Do we not find on the “logo” of Christian Science, the Cross and Crown, the words:

·  Heal the sick · Raise the dead · Cleanse the lepers · Cast out demons · 

 My next pencil mark emphasises the word “glow.” On page 6 we are told that when Mary Baker recovered from a fever as a child, as she later recalled: “...a soft glow of ineffable joy came over me…” And on page 11 we have the phrase “In the glow of evening firelight”. I love it.

 Our author has given us some lovely phrasing. At one point I wrote “evaluating.” The sentence is on pages 123-124: “Her human achievements announced the triumph of her spiritual knowing.”

Page 22: “In proportion to her weaning from human dependence came the necessity for leaning upon the divine.” This thought has been immortalised in the very first words of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.” And her teaching has her students loving the hymn which Jill Gooding gave us in praise of it. (See hymn 519 in the Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-605.)

Joyce Voysey