Mary Baker Eddy

“ Also I declare their sole right to the making and exclusive sale of the duplicates of said portrait.
I simply ask that those who love me purchase this portrait.
Mary Baker Eddy. The material prosperity of the Mother Church continued and the congregation soon outgrew the original building. At the June communion in 1902 ten thousand Christian Scientists were present. In the business meeting which followed they pledged themselves, "with startling grace," as Mrs. Eddy put it, to raise two million dollars, or any part of that sum which should be needed, to build an annex. ”

“ Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, author of its textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, and first pastor of the Christian Science denomination, is without doubt one of the most remarkable women in America. ”

“ While even in the very latest edition of Science and Health the flavour of Mrs. Eddy lingers on every page, like a dominating strain of blood that cannot be bred out, the book has been rearranged and retouched by so many hands that the personal element has been greatly moderated. In the old files of the Journal, however, we seem to get Mrs. Eddy with singular directness and to come into very intimate contact with her. When she is angry one can fairly hear the voice behind the type, and when she bestows royal favours one can see the smile at the other end of the copy. ”

“ Christian Science is as yet the lengthened shadow of Mary Baker Eddy. Her own immediate, personal pupils are still teaching, and her life and characteristics impressed upon them are given out to each and all. Every phase of life is solved by answering the question, "What would Mrs. Eddy do?" Mrs. Eddy's ideas about dress, housekeeping, business, food, health, the management of servants, the care of children—all are blended into a composite, and this composite is the Christian Scientist as we see and know him. ”

“ Eddy has endeavored to explain how she approached this great work. He who runs may not read here. Loose conceptions arise from a careless use of terms, and, as in a trial where life depends on exact and technical phrasing, so in knowing the real Mary Baker Eddy one must apply himself to comprehend her terminology and how she came to adopt it in order to realize what business she was about. ”

“ Through four successive years she had labored carefully, patiently, earnestly, writing and rewriting, while the truth grew in her understanding. It is no refutation of her sublime discovery in 1866 or of her divine guidance in preparing and presenting its principles that the work was a growth and did not spring full blown into her mind. Mary Baker Eddy could never have made her discovery in 1866 had she not been prepared for it by long application to spiritual inquiry. ”

“ Who would begrudge her her hard-won right to retirement, peace, and serenity? It would be difficult to believe, did not all the world know, that in October of this same year two representatives of a New York newspaper did present themselves at Pleasant View and demand an audience with the venerable founder then in her eighty-fifth year. So churlish and so threatening was their demand, so steeped were they in a strange suspicion, that the faithful protectors of Mrs. Eddy’s home life knew not what to say. ”

“ The wife simply recognized no reality in the belief, and, seeing only perfect being, felt no fear. She did nothing,—no “treating” in the usual sense. There is nothing to do but to understand that all is harmony, always. He felt the presence that destroys the sense of evil, and next morning—there was nothing left to recover from.
A lady, while doing some starching, thoughtlessly put her hand into the scalding starch to wring out a collar. Recalled to mortal sense by the stinging pain, she immediately realized the all-power of God. At once the pain began to subside ”

“ On the contrary, she sat almost constantly at her desk, writing press notices and newspaper interviews upon the subject of her husband's death. Mrs. Eddy, indeed, is never so commanding a figure as when she bestirs herself in the face of calamity. She gave way to fear and dread only in the short intervals when she laid aside her driven pen for rest, and her best energies were concentrated upon how she should present to the public this misfortune which, if wrongly understood, might be used as an effective argument against Christian Science, and might retard her advancement in a new field. ”

“ Patterson, afterwards Mrs. Eddy, lived in Lynn, she was known as an unusual woman holding peculiar religious views. Never have I heard anything more against her, and I used to see her every day for many years. It was said she held peculiar views at which many people laughed. But no one spoke against her otherwise.”
Yet it was her very life that they were against, these friends of hers; for life meant nothing to her without religion. She could more easily give up society, culture, books, even church, than she could give up speaking of the understanding of God which had come to her. ”

“ The public is merely a multiplied "me."—M.T.]
CHAPTER VII "We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in Revelation x. ”

“ Committing the process of Mind-healing to frail mortals, untaught and unrestrained by Science, is like putting a sharp knife into the hands of a blind man or a raging maniac, and turning him loose in the crowded streets of a city. ”

“ Eddy were related by the students which show her never to have forgotten those sterling habits gained from the guidance of a mother remarkable throughout her life for housewifely virtue.
Though occasionally entertaining her students at table and serving them with the food she prepared with her own hands, she was ever the teacher, writer, lecturer, organizer. If she sometimes walked on a pleasant evening with them to her favorite retreat on the beach, she never relaxed into the idleness of mere diversion. Spiritual realization was the constant theme of her conversation. ”

“ His time-honoured observance of the Sabbath, which was a fixed institution at the Baker farm, was abandoned because Mary could not, after a long morning in church, sit still all day in the house with folded hands, listening to the reading of the Bible. Sundays became a day of torture not only to the hysterical child, but to all the family, for she invariably had one of her bad attacks, and the day ended in excitement and anxiety. These evidences of an abnormal condition of the nerves are important to any study of Mrs. Eddy and her career. ”

“ Eddy suddenly left Boston, driven from home, so she declared, by malicious mesmerism. The fear of it had for a long time completely dominated her, and it was now interfering seriously with her work in the college and church. She spent her time in talking about it; in treating and fighting against it, and in discovering and thwarting imaginary plots. She felt it reaching out to her, not only from her enemies, but from her most trusted students and friends. ”

“ Love paints the petal with myriad hues of beauty, glances in the sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of Omnipotence, kindles the night with heaven's gems, and covers the earth with bright and living characters. The world would collapse without the intelligence that holds the winds in His fists. Philosophy nor scepticism can efface the science that reveals Mind through its wondrous works. The immortal sense of beauty must enhance it, and nearness, not distance, lend enchantment to the view. ”

“ He said to her, “Go home and see only God's perfect man; you don't need to love a sinful mortal such as you have been looking upon.” The lady followed his advice, as he told her there is no separation in divine Mind. In a short time peace and harmony were in her home, and both husband and wife became members of a Christian Science church.
This testimony was like a message from heaven to me. I had received many benefits from the study of Science and Health, but it had never dawned upon my darkened consciousness till then how wonderful our God is. ”

“ Should not the loving warning, the far-seeing wisdom, the gentle entreaty, the stern rebuke have been heeded, in return for all that love which brooded tireless over their tender years? for all that love that hath fed them with Truth, — even the bread that cometh down from heaven, — as the mother-bird tendeth her young in the rock-ribbed nest of the raven's callow brood! ”

“ Eddy was weaving her spell about a new favourite that she was at her best, and it was then that she most believed in herself. But she could never stop with enchanting, merely. She must altogether absorb the new candidate; he must have nothing left in him which was not from her. If she came upon one insoluble atom hidden away anywhere in the marrow of his bones, she experienced a revulsion and flung him contemptuously aside.
Dr. Foster had been in the house but a little while when Mrs. Eddy told him she foresaw that the relation between them must be a very close one. ”

“ Soon after, it came about that I was separated from every one who had ever heard of Christian Science; and, as I lived in the country, no one came to visit me for about eight months. At first, I thought the Lord had wrought a great evil I had no one to talk to, but would take my Science and Health every morning, before going about my work, and read; yet mortal mind would say, “You can do no good, with no one to talk with.” At last, one morning after listening to the serpent's voice, I looked out at the little wild flowers as they waved to and fro ”

“ Through the careful and prayerful study of Science and Health I have been lifted from sickness to health, from sorrow to peace, from lack to plenty, and, the most beautiful of all, from darkness to light. ”

“ Sweeter than the balm of Gilead, richer than the diamonds of Golconda, dear as the friendship of those we love, are justice, fraternity, and Christian charity. The song of my soul must remain so long as I remain. ”

“ What is it but another name for Christian Science, the cognomen of all true religion, the quintessence of Christianity, that heals disease and sin and destroys death! Part and parcel of Truth and Love, wherever one ray of its effulgence looks in upon the heart, behold a better man, woman, or child. ”

“ When I can get a Christian, as I know he is, and a woman that can fill his place I shall do it. But I have no time to receive company, to call on others, or to go out of my house only to drive. Am always driven with work for others, but nobody to help me even to get help such as I would choose.
Again,
Mother. The idea of her own possible political power was evidently rather pleasing to Mrs. Eddy, for in a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor, October 2, 1897, she had already suggested it. "It would seem," she writes, "as if Christian Science were engirdling the earth. ”

“ Eddy’s maternal ancestry, in the same history of New Hampshire families it is stated that Mark Baker married Abigail Ambrose of Pembroke. She was the daughter of Deacon Nathaniel Ambrose, a man at once pious and public-spirited. ”

“ Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear No ill, — since God is good, and loss is gain. Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing; In that sweet secret of the narrow way, Seeking and finding, with the angels sing: “Lo, I am with you alway,” — watch and pray. No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain; No night drops down upon the troubled breast, When heaven's aftersmile earth's tear-drops gain, And mother finds her home and heavenly rest.
June
Whence are thy wooings, gentle June? Thou hast a Naiad's charm; Thy breezes scent the rose's breath; Old Time gives thee her palm. ”

“ He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates!
On Thursday morning, December 8, services of interment were held at Chestnut Hill. All the world seemed covered with white snow. It was a bright, cold day and the sun gave to the snow a brilliance which made it appear a sacred, radiant carpet. About fifty guests, among whom were the members of Mrs. Eddy’s family, her personal students of Boston, the members of her household, and the officers of the Mother Church, also a few distinguished jurists and statesmen, assembled in the parlors of the house. ”

“ Eddy soon made it known to him, however, that he was to be a teacher in her college, and she duly installed him as professor of obstetrics. [1] She took great comfort in Dr. Foster's presence in the house and began to feel that from him she might hope for the unquestioning obedience and perpetual adoration she was always seeking. She loved to amaze and astonish; when her students ceased to "wonder," she was usually through with them. Each of her favourites gave her, as it were, a new lease of life; with each one her interest in everything quickened. ”

“ Eddy he had, at least, learned obedience in a hard and manly school. The story of his life at sea, which he contributed in several articles to the Christian Science Journal, is a vigorous and sturdy piece of narrative-writing, full of wrecks and typhoons and adventures with cannibal tribes, which make his subsequent career seem all the more remarkable. Concerning his first meeting with Mrs. Eddy in 1884, and his conversion to Christian Science, he writes at length. His last voyage, from Peru home to Boston, was made for the purpose of joining his invalid wife. ”

“ Having sent from her home in Salem for a practitioner and having been greatly benefited in health, she determined to meet the author of the book and study its doctrine at first hand. She accordingly came to Lynn. When she was shown into the little gray-walled parlor, she looked about in some wonderment. Expecting to find austerity, she was surprised to behold harmony, beauty, and sunshine. Yet this presently appeared the natural environment for the religion of love. Her meeting with Mrs. Eddy was typical of many such meetings. ”