Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy

Born Mary Morse Baker. She founded Christian Science, and was well known in her day as a religious reformer, and a healer. Best known as simply Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 - December 3, 1910) founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and was the author of its fundamental doctrinal Textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Unbeknownst to most, she received that from intense prayer and faith, that she would find a way to help out all of her fellow human beings, this was her motive.

Life & Family

Mary Baker Eddy, the youngest of the six children of Abigail and Mark Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire. She spent most of her childhood near Concord. Because Mary was a sickly child suffering from a variety of childhood diseases, she spent most of her life being homeschooled by her older brother, student of Dartsmouth, Albert. When she was only 20 years of age, this beloved most favorite brother died. During the 19th Century, there were also limitations to the quality and quantity of education offered to females at that time in American history. This was in part due to the fact that the piety of the Puritan heritage, especially in New England, was very real, and had great influence on society and therefore did indeed have an impact. Mary Baker Eddy was raised a Congregationalist, she rebelled against teachings like predestination. She suffered chronic illness and developed a strong interest in the biblical accounts of early Christian healing. Her young life was full of challenges, as a young person. In 1843 she married George Washington Glover. He died , 3 months before the birth of their only child, George Washington Glover, Jr. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson. This marriage did not last and ended in a divorce, in 1873, due to the fact the man had committed adultery, and he admitted it openly.

In 1877, she married a third time, Asa Gilbert Eddy, he tragically died in 1882.

Due to the condition of her health, she was determined to find a way to not only cure herself of ailments but also help others. This was a time long before the advent of antibiotics. She researched what was available to her at the time, homeopathy, and allopathic therapies. Her heart's desire was to find the connection of mind and body relationship and understanding. Mary Baker Eddy did intense study of the Bible, seeking the secrets of spiritual healing.

In the 1860s she began to explore faith-healing and associated with Phineas Quimby. His influence on her is disputed; the Christian Science Church maintains she thought highly of him personally but ultimately disavowed his technique as more mesmerism-based than Christian.

Illness

After a severe injury in 1866, Eddy turned to the Bible and recovered unexpectedly. Despite this unexpected recovery, however, she still tried to claim money from the city for her injury on the grounds that she was ‘still suffering from the effects of that fall’. She then devoted the next three years to biblical study and the development of Christian Science. Convinced that illness was, at base, a mental illusion that could be healed through a clearer perception of God, she began teaching her theory of healing to others privately. She felt that she had discovered a positive rule or Principle to healing in a new understanding of God as divine Principle and infinite Spirit above the limitations of a material sense of reality that she termed error.

Faith of Mary Baker Eddy

Mary was inspired by prayer and devout desire to understand the heart's response to God's majesty, and overflowing love, that was being taught at that time and place, by a well-known minister at the time by the name of Jonathan Edwards, this was his tradition. She showed a deep desire to understand the Bible beyond a surface level, and this was very evident from a very young age. Mary was determined to find and harness the power of faith in the Holy Spirit, of healing oneself of physical and internal illness.

Her set forth her understanding of this discovery in a book entitled "Science and Health" (years later retitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), which she called the textbook of Christian Science, and which she published in its first edition of one thousand copies in 1875, writing therein, "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (page 107).

Eddy would devote the remaining years of her life to the establishment of her church, authoring its governing bylaws, "The Manual of the Mother Church," and revising "Science and Health." Mary Baker Eddy was a highly controversial religious leader, author, and lecturer, thousands of people flocked to her teachings and claimed to find healing. She had a gift, of sincerity and deep desire to help others, and many were drawn to this kind of deep connection she emanated with God. Making the relationship with Heavenly Father, a meaningful daily experience for others, through the teachings she was able to receive through her life of prayer. Her influence is felt to this day all over the world.

Founding a Church

Eddy would build her Church on the strength of this healing work by both herself as well as over four thousands students that she taught at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts between the years 1882 and 1889. These students spread across the country practicing healing by her teachings. Through the auspices of her church, she would authorize these students to list themselves as Christian Science Practitioners in her church's official monthly organ, the Christian Science Journal.

In 1908, at the age of 87, she founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper devoted to balance. She also founded the Christian Science Journal in 1883, a monthly magazine focused chiefly on the church audience; the Christian Science Sentinel in 1898, a weekly religious periodical written for a more general public audience, and the Herald of Christian Science, a religious magazine with editions in non-English languages, for children, and in English-Braille. She died December 10, 1910.

In 1921 on the 100th anniversary of Mrs Eddy's death, a 100 ton, 11 foot high granite pyramid was dedicated on the site of her birthplace in Bow, Massachusetts. A gift from the Masons (the only other religious society church members are permitted to join), it was later dynamited by order of the Mother Church Board of Directors who feared that, like Mrs Eddy's home in Pleasant View which they also demolished, it was becoming a place of pilgrimage. Although Mrs Eddy cultivated personal praise in her lifetime for various reasons, including for publicity and fund raising, Christian Science theology shuns both the cult of personality, and religious reliquaries.

Biographies

• A biography which eventually became the church-authorized biography of Eddy is Robert Peel's trilogy Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority. (1966-1971)
• A more recent single volume is another church-authorized 1999 but controversial work by a non-Christian Scientist, Gillian Gill (ISBN 0-7382-0227-4), which includes review of the numerous other biographies over the years.
• See also Stephen Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone, Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism, (ISBN 0-253-34673-8) for a new account of her founding the church and relations to critics such as Mark Twain. (Indiana University Press: 2006)
• Mary Baker Eddy, Speaking for Herself (ISBN 0-87952-275-5)
• Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1993) began as a famous Muckraking magazine series 1907-08 and highly critical book in 1909. Scholars who are not Christian Scientists rely on it, but church members disfavor it.
• Doris and Moris Grekel also wrote three-part non church-authorized biography on Eddy, The Discovery of the Science of Man: (1821-1888), (ISBN 1-893107-23-X), The Founding of Christian Science: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy 1888-1900, (ISBN 1-893107-24-8), and The Forever Leader: (1901-1910) (ISBN 0-9645803-8-1). This biography was aimed at serious students of Christian Science as opposed to the general public.
• Former Church treasurer and clerk, John V. Dittemore teamed up with Ernest Sutherland Bates, in 1932, to write a unfavorable biography, Mary Baker Eddy - The Truth and the Tradition. Most of the prose was written by Bates and Dittemore would later distance himself from the book as it was highly opinionated and contained factual and historical inaccuracies. It has some genuinely distinct information including a list of Eddy's students taught at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College.
• The famous novelist Stefan Zweig wrote a biography Mary Baker Eddy

Quotes

"True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection."

"Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven."

"The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity."

"Whatever enslaves man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes man free."

"To talk the right and live the wrong is foolish deceit, doing one's self the most harm."

"Moral conditions will be found always harmonious and health-giving."

"We should master fear, instead of cultivating it."

Works

• Science And Health, With Key To The Scriptures - 1875, revised through 1910
• Miscellaneous Writings
• Retrospection and Introspection
• Unity of Good
• Pulpit and Press
• Rudimental Divine Science
• No and Yes
• Christian Science versus Pantheism
• Message to The Mother Church, 1900
• Message to The Mother Church, 1901
• Message to The Mother Church, 1902
• Christian Healing
• The People's Idea of God
• The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany
• The Manual of The Mother Church

Credits

Eddy, Mary Baker. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 6, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition: http://www.library.eb.com/eb/article-9031964

Christian Science. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 6, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition: http://www.library.eb.com/eb/article-9082420

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blqueddy.htm Retrieved Sept 13 2006

About Women's History

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/ucbio_mary_baker_eddy.htm

Jone Johnson Lewis About Women's History Retrieved Sept 13 2006

http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/marybakereddy/quotes.jhtml

Retrieved Sept 14 2006

The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity Quotes & Ideas

Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures

Point of Interest

• Longyear Museum
• Mary Baker Eddy Historic House
• Massachusetts Metaphysical College with a complete list of students of Eddy
• Septimus J. Hanna student of Eddy and vice-president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College
• William R. Rathvon student of Eddy, early Christian Scientist and lone person to leave an audio recording of his hearing Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at the age of nine.
• Bliss Knapp childhood friend of Eddy's whose father was one of the first Directors of Eddy's church. Bliss was a somewhat controversial Christian Scientist.

External links

• The Mary Baker Eddy Library
• The Longyear Museum
• Works by Mary Baker Eddy. Project Gutenberg
• National Women's Hall of Fame (Inducted in 1995)
• First Church of Christ, Scientist
• Christian Way: Former Christian Scientists for Jesus Christ (See Discussion under "Balance")
• Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Credits

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