Unbounded love - the Knapp family

Ira and Flavia Knapp and their four children lived on a farm in Lisbon, New Hampshire. Lisbon is situated just south of Littleton in the upper north west of the state. It was named after Lisbon in Portugal. 

The couple took class instruction with Mrs. Eddy in 1884. Ira Knapp is described by Robert Peel in Mary Baker Eddy: the years of trial (2nd edition) as "a farmer with the flowing beard, blazing eyes, and invincible rectitude of an Old Testament prophet" (p. 236).  

Peel recounts that some time before this, Flavia had been "healed by Christian Science after years of invalidism" and afterwards "she walked to the next farm and back with her four children dancing around her for sheer joy at seeing their mother able to go out again" (ibid).

But at first the couple found the healing work difficult. Their teacher encouraged them to stay the course - "stand the test" and "be faithful over a few things" (p. 237). They did.

We next read about the Knapp family on page 337 when Mrs. Eddy sought "a little rest and perspective" (p. 336) and stayed at their farm at Lyman, New Hampshire. Peel says that here "she found solace in the four Knapp children, in the simple farm life so familiar to her from her own childhood, in the woods and fields through which she went walking... and in the unbounded love of all the Knapps" (p. 337). The family later moved to Boston.

The Longyear Foundation have lovely tributes to Ira Knapp ("an obedient disciple") and Flavia Knapp.

Hymn 59 from the Christian Science Hymnal comes to mind as I contemplate this family.

Run the straight race through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes, and seek His face;
Life with its way before us lies,
Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.

Faint not nor fear, His arms are near;
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
On Him rely and thou shalt see
That Christ is all in all to thee.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 59:2, 3)

https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/united-states/new-hampshire

Julie Swannell

Early workers

In the formative years of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy was learning that not every student would adhere to her exact teachings. There were many tangents. Further, she could not alone do all the teaching. On page 218 of Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (2^nd edition), author Robert Peel observes --

One thing was clear to Mrs. Eddy. If the purity of Christian Science was to be maintained, she must train qualified students to become teachers and not leave its propagation to the mercies of every cheerful rascal who chose to appropriate its name.

Peel also observes that

“[f]or the most part the students were not, at this time, wealthy or prominent or brilliant people” (ibid. p. 220).

And, for some reason I was surprised to read about the number of students from outside major towns and cities:

“more than half of Mrs. Eddy’s students came from rural districts and small towns, and the pattern of country visits to patients on lonely farms was a prominent part of the total Christian Science picture” (ibid).

What follows on pages 220-222 is a revealing and tender picture of a small band of earnest and faithful workers who were not just talking about Christian Science but giving their all to practice it and thereby to bless mankind.

A comment from Eddy’s pen provides insight into the lives of these early workers, their goals and their sacrifices, as well, of course into Mrs. Eddy’s own life:

The rare bequests of Christian Science are costly, and they have won fields of battle from which the dainty borrower would have fled. Ceaseless toil, self-renunciation, and love, have cleared its pathway.

The motive of my earliest labors has never changed. It was to relieve the sufferings of humanity by a sanitary system that should include all moral and religious reform.

          Retrospection and Introspection, p. 30: 3-9

Today’s sincere students have the same motive.

Julie Swannell

Insights into Mrs. Eddy's character and work

I love this passage which starts at the bottom of page 231 of Robert Peel’s Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (2^nd edition): 

Mrs. Eddy, in fact, had her feet very firmly on the ground.  When students gave abstruse metaphysical answers to questions which demanded simple common sense, she soon brought them down to earth.  If a young couple had no place to leave a child while they were studying, she would tell them cheerfully to bring the child along, and in at least one case she taught an entire class with a delighted little girl sitting on her lap.  When the summer heat caused a certain amount of restiveness in one of her classes, Mrs. Eddy asked dryly, “Shall we move to some cooler part of the city, or shall we remain and make our own atmosphere.”

 

Regarding social reform, Alzire Chevaillier wrote (top of page 247): 

Mrs. Eddy was very appreciative of my voluntary welfare work & in a serious talk I had with her one of the many evenings she invited me to speak with her, she admitted when I said that the other half of Christian Science would demand human brotherhood practically applied in every relation of life.  But she said the first thing is to implant firmly in human consciousness the Power of God to heal sickness, sorrow etc.  When that has taken hold of mankind, the other will in time follow as a necessary sequence. 

 

On page 252 Peel sort of defines syntax, when discussing Mr. Wiggin’s corrections to Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Peel writes: 

In general, the ambiguities [for readers] lay in the area of syntax rather than diction—in the dangling participle, the misplaced subjunctive, a pronoun without visible antecedent, an unwieldy sentence or overloaded paragraph. 

 

Joyce Voysey

 

Ed. It may be of interest to readers that Science & Health was first published 150 years ago this year.