Helen M. Wright

Mary Baker Eddy

A New Look At Her Place in Bible Prophecy
(And Its Deep Meaning For These Crisis-Ridden Times)

Dear Reader: In explanation of the few pages that might come loose: Six years ago when Boston attorneys threatened to sue because a copyright was claimed on the beautiful Bliss Knapp material, the writer removed the “offending” pages and pasted in substitute pages. The glue is not holding up. But this may eventually add to the book's value.

© Copyright Helen M. Wright 1980ISBN 0-9604648-0-8

Dedication: This book is lovingly dedicated to the spiritually-minded reader, to the pure in heart, and in particular to: Bill, Anna, Zoltan, Grace, Marie, Francie, Rookie, Kathleen, Johnny, both Margies, Juliann, Tommy, Rocky, Sally, Jackie, Bessie, Elsie, Florence, Tina, Billy, and Diane with whom I (as the Moderator) held regular meetings for over two decades, and with whom I have had an unbroken friendship stretching over more than four decades.

Acknowledgments: Gratitude and appreciation is expressed—To my husband Bill, who encouraged me to write this book and assisted in many ways.— To John W. Doorly of London, England, who as early as 1916 began to glimpse the working of the system in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy—”the system that she denominated Christian Science.” Since 1945 Doorly and the illustrious students who have followed the same line have published over one hundred books and pamphlets explaining the system of Christian Science which Mrs. Eddy embodied in the textbook.— To Richard Oakes for making available to the world—in his two books: Essays and Other Footprints, and Divinity Course and General Collectanea— some of the Gilbert C. Carpenter, Jr. Collection of the wonderful Mary Baker Eddy teachings not contained in her published writings.— To Ralph Geradi, who for over half a century has been a true and trusted friend of the Christian Science movement, and has filled a unique and special part in God's plan.—To International Metaphysical Association, Inc., for their generous and faithful world-wide support of the pure Science of Christian Science activities, and their wholehearted support in the publication of this work.

Foreword
Mary Baker Eddy, the Revelator to this age, can be known and understood only through her writings. To Scientists who are seeing that the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, reveals their true identity as coexistent and coeternal with God, Mrs. Eddy's name, like the name of Jesus, becomes ever more sacred. Her God-appointed mission to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth—to discover the grandeur of divine Science and to found it in human consciousness—was sublimely consummated. She revealed humanity's oneness with God, the one Mind and divine Principle, Love. She showed us that what Jesus did individually each one of us can and must do, so that man generically is found to be God's image and likeness.

Jesus offered the highest proofs of divine Love, but his hearers understood neither his words nor his works. History repeated itself in the reception given Mary Baker Eddy, and in 1893 she pointed out to her most advanced students that “for the world to understand me in my true light and life would do more for the Cause than aught else could. This I learn from the fact that the enemy tries harder to hide these two things from the world than to win any other points. Also Jesus' life and character in their first appearing were treated in like manner. And I regret to see that loyal students are not more awake to this great demand in their measures to meet the enemies' tactics” (Divinity Course and General Collectanea, hereinafter abbreviated to “DCC,” p. 111. See Appendix).

The central theme of these seminars is, first, to show Mary Baker Eddy's place in Bible prophecy; and second, to show that Mrs. Eddy as Revelator, Discoverer, Founder, and Demonstrator of divine Science, laid the foundations in human consciousness that are ushering in a totally new structure of consciousness. Then as Isaiah said: “unto us a child is born.”

Because of the world's gross materialism and its utter lack of mental preparedness to receive a spiritual revelation of the magnitude of that which came to Mary Baker Eddy in the year 1866, she had to veil this Science of the Christ, this spiritual leaven, in her textbook. Much of her highest teaching is cloaked in mystical symbolism. She hid it in such a way as to require growth in spiritual understanding before her meaning could be understood.

While a great deal has unfolded in the seventy years since Mrs. Eddy left us in person, it may require the entire seven-thousand year period, or the next millennium to fully disclose to humanity as a whole what is contained in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and its solution for all humanity's woes.

To make available to others our research and our glimpses of the meaning of this mystical symbolism, as well as to call attention to Mrs. Eddy's place in scriptural prophecy, has been the objective in recording these class Sessions. The Sessions are based on Mrs. Eddy's statement: “Those who look for me in person, or elsewhere than in my writings, lose me instead of find me” (My. 120:2). We find Mary Baker Eddy in her writings as well as in scriptural prophecy as “The woman,” whom Jerimaiah (31:22) said would, “compass a man,” meaning she would teach all that Jesus had proved to be true, and bring the second coming of the Christ,” “the Comforter.”-Helen WrightAutumn 1979

Explanatory Notes:
Many of the explanations brought out by the students in these Sessions can be found in the writings of ALICE ORGAIN and other early recorders of the life and teaching of Mary Baker Eddy.

Italics not appearing in the original are sometimes used in quotations, not to emphasize, but to identify that portion of the quote directly applicable to the point under discussion.

Abbreviations for the titles of Mrs. Eddy's writings are those used in the Concordance to (Miscellaneous Writings and Works Other than Science and Health.)

References to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy are shown in parenthesis, e.g. (464:12).

EOF and DCC:

EOF is the abbreviation for Essays and Other Footprints

DCC is the abbreviation for Divinity Course and General Collectanea.

Spelling of fulfil and fulfilment, practice and practise is in conformity with Mrs. Eddy's spelling.

CONTENTS

PART I: MARY BAKER EDDY'S DIVINELY
PROPHESIED MISSION

PART II: MRS. EDDY FOREVER FOUND IN HER WRITING SESSION

APPENDIX

PART I: MARY BAKER EDDY'S DIVINELY PROPHESIED MISSION

SESSION 1: GOD'S MESSENGERS

INTRODUCTORY

Moderator: In this present series of seminars we are going to look at Mary Baker Eddy in a new way. We will see her not as an individual but as the fulfilment of the prophecies regarding her that run through both the Old and New Testament. These prophecies culminate in Jesus' prophecy to St. John concerning the woman of the Apocalypse who was to bring the Comforter Jesus had promised in chapters 14, 15, and 16 of St. John's Gospel.

This Comforter, Divine Science, enables man to become aware of his perfect completeness as an ever-present fact. The woman in the Apocalypse who symbolizes generic man (561:22) brings forth a “man child,” called Science and Health. In the sixteenth to the fiftieth editions of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy identifies herself unmistakably with the woman of the Apocalypse.

What does this tell us?

The woman of the Apocalypse, who symbolizes generic man, “weds” her own “man child,” Science and Health. This simply means that the Mind, God, that wrote Science and Health is wedded to the truth expressed in that “precious volume.”

Jesus prophesied that the Comforter, Divine Science—all that the woman of the Apocalypse stands for—would reveal to you all things, would teach you all things, and would bring to your remembrance all things that he had said. Jesus further stated that he had yet many things he would like to say unto his disciples, “but ye cannot bear them now [it would take nineteen centuries of spiritual growth before men would be ready for his 'second coming'.] Howbeit when he, the spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. . . .” (See John 14, and 16.)

Tommy: Jesus was speaking for all mankind, and was foreseeing the time when the “spirit of Truth,” the Comforter, Divine Science, would lead man, generically (meaning all mankind), to be the Son of God. He foresaw the time when everyone on earth would have the same understanding of God that he had

Moderator: Yes, Tommy, Jesus called himself the “bridegroom” (John 3:29). He could call himself the bridegroom because he had “wedded” himself to divine Science, meaning he understood Divine Science and practised it.

Bessie: In this biblical symbolism, who would the “bride” be?

Moderator: The Mind of Christ, the Mind that wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, would be the Bride. The Bride is the Science that explains how Jesus performed his works, and how each one of us can do what Jesus did, and do even greater works. (As we continue with these Sessions all these symbols Mrs. Eddy uses in Science and Health such as “Bride,” “Bridegroom,” “Father,” “Mother,” “woman of the Apocalypse,” “wilderness woman,” “man child,” and many other symbols, will become quite clear. As in any other subject, patience and a desire to understand are the prime requisites.)

Kathleen: Then this would be why Mrs. Eddy can equate herself with the woman of the Apocalypse as she so unmistakably did in former editions of Science and Health?

Moderator: Yes, Kathleen. And as she unmistakably does in our present edition on page 565 where she states that while the impersonation of the spiritual idea had but a brief history in the earthly life of Jesus, of his kingdom there shall be no end. This immaculate idea, she says, “represented first by man,” meaning by Jesus, and represented “last by woman,” meaning by Mary Baker Eddy, will “baptize with fire; . . .”

There are many other passages in her writings in which, when we look with spiritual sense, we have no difficulty grasping the fact that Mrs. Eddy very definitely identifies her mission with what is symbolized by the God-crowned woman.

Science and Health is the “little book” with which the God-crowned woman is pregnant. In Revelation 12:5 this “little book” is referred to as “a man child”: “And she brought forth a man child…” This man child is TRUTH, which Mary Baker brought to this age. It is the second coming of the Christ. This second coming of the Christ is destined to lift man out of the belief of mortality and into his native province as one with God.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is the whole Word of God. It encompasses the Bible. Through the “system” Science and Health contains, it is a full and final revelation of God's nature and of man's nature as God's reflection. This revelation, being a Science, will unfold forever, since “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis” (258:13).

Francie: It is this wonderful revelation, then, that is equated with “the Lord God Almighty” in Revelation 21:22 (576:8), isn't it?

Moderator: Yes, Francie, it is the revelation and the founding of it in human consciousness that is equated with “the Lord God Almighty”—the revelation and all it signifies and entails, and its complete assimilation by humanity.

We can see, therefore, that Mary Baker Eddy's consciousness must be Spirit since “Spirit is the only substance and consciousness recognized by divine Science” (278:4). Spiritual consciousness enabled Mary Baker Eddy to receive this profound revelation even as it will enable us to receive revelation. So it is the God-consciousness of Mary Baker Eddy that is equated with the “Bride” of Revelation, as well as with the woman of the Apocalypse, as we shall see.

The important thing to remember as we progress with these Sessions is that Jesus manifested the idea of the fatherhood of God and Mary Baker Eddy manifested the motherhood of God. Through her discovery of divine Science—as its Revelator and Demonstrator and her founding of it in human consciousness—Mrs. Eddy revealed God's motherhood character. This means that she revealed divine Love. It is only through divine Love that man, generically—meaning all mankind, humanity as a whole—can become the Son of God, as is divinely prophesied in the symbol of the woman of the Apocalypse. Becoming the Son of God means the ushering in of divine brotherhood, or divine unity. There can only be true individuality when individuality rests upon this Christ Science, because this Christ Science shows God (Principle) to be the only creator and the Father of all, the divine Principle of all. This means that every individual consciousness reflects its divine Principle, Love, and via Principle, reflects every other consciousness, which also reflects the living love of its divine Principle. This is the “unity” of divine Love. Love is the Principle of unity, and there can be no true unity without it.

Who would like to add something regarding Jesus' prophecy to St. John about the woman of the Apocalypse, and how Mary Baker Eddy fulfilled that prophecy?

Anna: Mrs. Eddy introduced a totally new way of looking at God. She discovered divine Science which is a completely new Science that shows the nature of God. Her discovery was a Science that explained God, or Being. She explained Principle and Principle's universe as God presented it to her, discarding once and for all the viewpoint of conventional religion. Therefore if we want to be Scientists we too must start with God Principle, and leave the ruts of human thinking and reasoning.

In her reasoning Mrs. Eddy always started with God, Principle, and never left God's standpoint. This approach was totally new. Religion had always started with man and consequently arrived at a man-like God. But, as the woman of the Apocalypse, Mrs. Eddy had to start with God and never leave God's standpoint. She wasn't the woman of the Apocalypse only from 1866 to 1910 but for all time, and when we understand that Mary Baker Eddy is the woman of the Apocalypse, we no longer have a fleshly person or a time sense. “Mrs. Eddy” and “the woman of the Apocalypse” are just different names for the same sense, but neither of them is a person. What Mrs. Eddy wrote was the woman of the Apocalypse writing it; what Mrs. Eddy brought was the woman of the Apocalypse bringing it. The woman of the Apocalypse is just a symbol for what Mrs. Eddy brought to the world. Mary Baker Eddy is the name God uses to give Science and Health to the world. Science and Health shows the Science behind Jesus' startling and yet natural demonstrations and examples as God's Principle’s personal representative.

Moderator: Note to the reader: In Part I of this book Mrs. Eddy is introduced, and the reader is shown how and why, because of personal viewpoints, she was lost to many—to those who saw her only as another mortal—just as Jesus was lost to those who saw him only as the son of Joseph and Mary.

In Part II Mrs. Eddy is found.

Part I shows the logical growth from the idea of wonderful and creative persons to the certainty of one all-responsible Person. Through the evidence presented, the most materially-minded inquirer would be forced to admit that Mary Baker Eddy was not an ordinary person—in fact Mrs. Eddy would be “lost” if she were confined to the ordinary sense of “persons.” The inquirer is led to see that Mary Baker Eddy had to be the way God was appearing to so-called material, personal, thought—first as a scribe of thought contained in a book, and finally as the God-offering that embraces and closes the book when its contents have been assimilated and man finds himself as God's own image and likeness. The reader finds himself as “incooporial, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love, of which man is the image and likeness.

PROPHECY INVOLVES FAITH

Moderator: Our subject for today is Mary Baker Eddy's place in Bible prophecy. Prophecy involves the genius of faith. Why is faith important?

Anna: It's important because what Mrs. Eddy discovered is unseen to the physical senses. Through the Science and system presented in the Christian Science textbook, she has given us the method whereby we can, individually, receive revelation direct from God divine Principle, in the same way she did.

Unequivocally she teaches that man is not a corporeal being, but is an infinite spiritual calculus of divine ideas, always bringing forth new revelations of goodness and perfection.

A doctrine as radical as this, that can in no way be compromised with the evidence of the five physical senses, must at first be accepted on faith since mortals are prone to believe only what they are aware of through sense testimony and what they have been taught to believe. The false testimony of the eye tells us the sun rises and sets. Until recently we had to accept on faith what natural science had discovered to be the fact about the earth's daily rotation.

Bill: Faith is important because it is the open door to learning in any subject. If I want to learn music I accept on faith that learning the seven notes: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, (do), will pave the way to my eventually understanding music. If I want to understand and use arithmetic, I accept on faith that learning the four basic functions: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, is essential. To acquire reading skill, I accept on faith that learning the alphabet is a necessary first step.

Dawning of Spiritual Realities in Faith

Sally: I like to think of the faith our great inventors had, and the faith that people like Charles Lindberg had when he flew the Atlantic, and the faith our spacemen had, more recently, when they journeyed to the moon.

Mrs. Eddy says that spiritual realities dawn in faith and then glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. (298:3) [This is so because as Jesus taught, “the kingdom of God is within you.”]

Francie: You might say that faith is that element of intelligence that enables divinity to reach humanity. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Through faith, patience and persistence we inherit the promises of our union with God. As we strive to enter the kingdom of heaven we constantly turn away from material sense and look toward the imperishable realities of Spirit. (21:9)

In Hebrews we read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (11:3).

Moderator: We have seen how valuable and indispensable faith is. Now let's look a little more closely at Mrs. Eddy's place in Bible prophecy.

Why is it important to be aware of Mrs. Eddy's place in Bible prophecy?

Kathleen: If we know her place in Bible prophecy it is a great aid to our understanding, because as has been pointed out, we accept spiritual realities on faith before we completely understand them. Moses was appointed to lead the people out of darkness. In order to lead them, he had to evoke their faith and allegiance.

God's Messengers Mistakenly Seen As Mere Mortals

Moderator: Jesus had difficulty persuading his followers that he had a message straight from God, just as Mrs. Eddy had the same difficulty nineteen centuries later when she came to complete his work on earth, and fulfill Jeremiah’s prophecy: “A woman shall co-pass a man” which Mary Baker Eddy did in the great divine revelation that came to her.

The disciples and others saw Jesus as the son of the local carpenter. This is why they were tempted to forsake and deny him at the crucifixion. Jesus had to arouse them from this spiritual ignorance. Both before and after the crucifixion he continually drew their attention to his role in Bible prophecy, to the part he was to play in God's plan of salvation.

In the conversations he had with his followers, after his resurrection, we are shown, unmistakably, the importance he placed on their seeing his role in scriptural prophecy.

Anna: That they had not taken Jesus seriously is implied in St. John's report of the conversation between Jesus and Mary Magdalen (John 20:15-17) and in John's statement: “for as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead” (John 20:9). But Jesus refused to be defeated in his life-mission, and he instructed Mary Magdalen, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17).

So Mary Magdalen alerted the disciples. Had she not done so, they might not have been receptive enough to recognize him. Their unbelief might have shut him out, since they were absolutely convinced he was dead. The crucifixion and death of Jesus caused the disciples and his other followers to doubt his teachings. On the walk to Emmaus, even though they had been alerted by Mary Magdalen, they were still questioning his Messiahship—they “reasoned.” They were uncomprehending. It was then that Jesus saw the need of defending his mission, so he “drew near and went with them,” and expounded in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:15-16). His renewed explanations, together with all that had happened, finally opened their eyes. They saw Jesus' true identity as portrayed in Bible prophecy, and they were never again tempted to forsake his teaching or be disloyal.

It is the same with Mary Baker Eddy and her teaching. She explained her place in Bible prophecy, just as Jesus had explained his. She was not just another religious leader. She was commissioned by God, divine Love, to bring the promised Comforter, and complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth.

Moderator: We look for Mary Baker Eddy not only in her writings but also in the many prophecies and references to her coming found in the Bible.

John the Baptist had been quick to recognize Jesus as the Lamb of God, but not so the chief priests and elders who were always trying to trick Jesus into saying something for which they could condemn him. When the elders asked him by what authority he did his mighty works, he questioned them about John the Baptist whom the people loved. (Matt. 21:24-27) He didn't tell them anything. He had the wisdom to let his heaven-bestowed authority remain a mystery to them. Mrs. Eddy did the same. Jesus and Mrs. Eddy both knew that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned.

We are today being asked if Mrs. Eddy's teachings are from heaven or of men. Mrs. Eddy knew her teaching was from God, that she was fulfilling Bible prophecy, but she also knew that the less said about it in her lifetime the better. Unwise talk about it only stirred up her enemies to heap on her more scorn, envy, reviling, and hate. This led her, when dealing with enemies, as for instance in the Woodbury lawsuit (according to Bliss Knapp), to advise her lawyers to convince the court that “a little white-haired old lady couldn't possibly be the woman of the Apocalypse.” Mrs. Eddy did this to offset the enemies' charges, and circumvent their sly maneuvers to discredit her divine mission.

Again, in her diversionary tactics, she calls attention to the woman spoken of in the twelfth chapter of Revelation as prefiguring no special individuality, but as just symbolic of purity much as the Statue of Liberty is symbolic, and doesn't represent any particular man or woman. While this is true in one respect, we could say the same thing regarding Micah's prophecy of Jesus (chapter 5:2) made many centuries before Jesus appeared; or Isaiah's prophecy (chapter 53) or any of the prophecies referring specifically to Jesus.

When something Mrs. Eddy had to say as a temporary defense strategy for the protection of her founding mission—or when she is reported to have said this or that—if it conflicts with what she said in Science and Health, all loyal Christian Scientists will adhere to, and honor, what Mrs. Eddy wrote in Science and Health. In her chapter, The Apocalypse, Mrs. Eddy makes it clear to the discerning reader that St. John's revelation concerned her mission to complete the work of Christ Jesus on earth; and that the God-crowned woman and the wilderness woman symbolize her two-fold mission: first, of receiving the revelation—that is, making the discovery—and second, founding it in human consciousness. But it must be clear that in equating Mrs. Eddy with the woman of the Apocalypse we do so in consonance with her statement that looking for her elsewhere than in her writings would mean losing her instead of finding her. (My. 120:2) Equating Mrs. Eddy with the woman of the Apocalypse is revolutionary. It will be repeated many times. All students must clearly understand that what is equated with the woman of the Apocalypse (who symbolizes generic man) is the God-Mind with which Mrs. Eddy is identified. When Peter correctly identified Jesus, saying, “Thou art the Christ,” it was the teachings of Jesus he was referring to, and not the personal Jesus. When we speak of Mary Baker Eddy in the same way, it is her writing and teaching that we are identifying as the Christ, not her physical personality. As a human personality, Mrs. Eddy counted herself as the weakest of mortals, but as the Discoverer and Founder of Divine Science she knew she was the bone and sinew of the world.

Mrs. Eddy Recognized As Prophesied Woman Of Apocalypse

Margie: Carolyn D. Noyes, an early student of Mary Baker Eddy, states that a distinguishing feature of Mrs. Eddy's students and loyal followers, and of her faithful Normal teachers, was that they recognized Mrs. Eddy to be the woman St. John prophesies in Revelation XII. They recognized that the “little book” spoken of in a previous chapter of Revelation is Science and Health, because the “angel” thought, meaning the Mind of Mary Baker Eddy, that brought the book, declared there should be time no longer. Only Science and Health brings such a message; it reveals the unreality of mortal mind and of all that goes with mortal mind, and time belongs to mortal mind. Just as in mathematics where 2x2=4 has nothing to do with time.

Mrs. Eddy's Science and her spiritual interpretation of the Bible insure the understanding that time is a mortal element. The city foursquare appearing at the end of the Bible is a view of timeless reality, which impels the journey from sense to Soul, until God's kingdom is revealed as ever-present, and time and mortality “fall into oblivion, 'unknelled, uncoffined, unknown' “ (441:11).

“Mrs. Eddy's loyal students knew that Truth, Christ, would come by the woman—by the woman St. John prophesies in Revelation XII. Mrs. Eddy's loyal students,” writes Mrs. Noyes, “knew that no mortal could have been instrumental in the coming of Christian Science; they knew that the ‘little book’ must be in accordance with the prophecy, “the seed of the woman.” They recognized that the “little book,” Science and Health, makes it clear that the unity of the male and female as two individual natures in one, was the divinely united spiritual consciousness that perfectly reflects God. In this consciousness there is no impediment to eternal bliss, and this divinely united spiritual consciousness is the central theme of Science and Health. “In so believing,” states Mrs. Noyes, “they recognize the only true Leader in Mrs. Eddy, the Revelator, the Discoverer and Founder of the Christ, Truth; and they recognized Science as containing the whole undivided Truth that is saving the world. They consider it an altogether sacred book, as prophesied by St. John; and they feel confident by the results of their work in casting out error and healing all manner of discord that it is the Word of God, and it will save all who trust in it; they see in it a continuation and confirmation of Jesus' teaching” [Miscellaneous Documents Relating to Christian Science], p. 277. See Appendix).

Moderator: It seems clear that if the world is to receive the message Mrs. Eddy brought then it must have the right evaluation of the messenger. All Christian Scientists know that the advent of Jesus was the “first coming” of the Christ, and they are just as convinced that Mary Baker Eddy's discovery of divine Science and the founding of it in human consciousness as Christian Science, fulfilled the prophecy of the “second coming.” Both the Old and New Testaments supply ample biblical authority for the conviction that Mrs. Eddy was God's messenger. She was the woman who was to take the leaven of Spirit and Truth and hide it in a right interpretation of Science, Theology, and Medicine until the whole lump of mortal error—the material theoretical life-basis—yielded to the spiritual and divine Principle, and the whole earth was transformed by Truth. One God can have only one whole divine and perfect reflection. This one whole divine and perfect reflection is generic man—the Christ.

Mrs. Eddy's prophetic role must be understood, not for her glorification, but simply because seeing her as God's representative to this age is a necessary step to seeing Truth correctly. If we look for Mary Baker Eddy in her writings (My. 120:2) then the name Mary Baker Eddy is synonymous with this one whole divine and perfect reflection, or generic man, the Christ. But Mary Baker Eddy is not synonymous with the divine reflection or generic man if we look at her as a person, a human personality. Restoring Mrs. Eddy to her rightful status in world consciousness and thus retoring to Christian Science its temporary “lost element of healing,” stands as the Mary Baker Eddy Institute’s Holy Grail.

Christian Science Originating With God

Grace: Christian Science couldn't have been a human invention; it must have originated with God. Only by divine revelation could Mrs. Eddy have discovered the Science that is destined to revolutionize world thought and usher in the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Moderator: Yes, Understanding the healing Truth she discovered returns. Mary Baker Eddy, the Revelator, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science to the spiritual pinacle where she so rightfully belongs.

Mrs. Eddy always made sure her students understood that it was the truth revealed to her by divine Mind, and which found expression through her, that was the Leader of the Christian Science movement. It was never a corporeal personality.

Her discovery of Christian Science fulfilled prophecy, and Mrs. Eddy constantly endeavored to turn the thoughts of her followers away from herself as a human personality to the contemplation of the Science, the divine revelation, that had come from God to the world through her. She brought the Christ Science, “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (583:10).

There is an article by Mrs. Eddy explaining the scientific phenomenon of individual being as the final outcome of the life more abundant. In it she said:

Jesus' mission on earth was to show by demonstration that there is no corporeal personality, no sickness, no sin, no death.

According to Christian Science, the word “person” means divinity, not humanity. This Science teaches that there is absolutely no such thing as physical personality. The incarnation (or fleshly environment) of Jesus was intended to illustrate the process by which physicality (or so-called material personality) is diminished—that proportionately as the human mind is spiritualized, physical personality decreases, until it finally disappears, as Jesus vanished in the ascension.

Jesus' work was individual, and can never be repeated. His reappearing must be impersonal. His second coming must be as an idea, not as corporeality. The second coming must present, not mind as incarnated in matter, or soul circled in the flesh, but a realization of Life, Truth, and Love in their spiritual signification, as set forth in the Scriptures and in Science and Health.

The mother who believes she gives, or can give, birth to a babe whose career will be an improvement upon that of Jesus—or will even reproduce his individuality—labors under a greater delusion than is found in the widely diffused doctrine concerning the second advent of Christ; because this [belief in a human personality] implies that the infinite can be embodied in the finite, and that there can be a material reappearance of what St. Paul calls 'the man Christ Jesus'; whereas the Savior proved that his growth was a progress upward and out of corporeality, into Spirit, not a retrogression downward, into the flesh. [Note: The belief that mortals are here to create othermortals is very strong. And it was the Chapter “Marriage” that saved the Cause. Mrs. Eddy did not want to teach today more than what the age has strength to bear. Jesus was crucified because he taught “death would never cease until ye women cease your child bearing; and “blessed are the wombs that never bear and the paps that never gave suck” Mrs. Eddy did not want to be crucifed so she wrote the Chapter Marriage.

“No mortal man or woman ever will, or ever can, take Jesus' place, or again fulfil his earthly mission. His work is already accomplished and needs no duplication. What will be developed through Christian Science, and is now unfolding itself, is the purer idea and spiritual manifestation of the Christ character in word and deed. The personal appearance of the Master was but once, and for all time.”

“The spiritually scientific phenomenon of individual being is the final outcome or result of the life more abundant which the Savior gave to the world in his demonstration of the unreality of what is called material personality, and his witness that the belief of any possible life, substance, and intelligence in or of matter is an illusion. He is simply mad who avers that a mortal and material man or woman is Deity, the divine Principle, or can be the divine idea. Such a blasphemous allegation, such a materialistic conjecture, such a misdirected imagination is anthropomorphic, and leads to atheism ...” (EOF. 23).

The Christ Character

Elsie: What would be “the Christ character” that Mrs. Eddy speaks of?

Margie: I think it would be those third degree qualities Mrs. Eddy writes of: “wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, [love], health, holiness” (116:2). The more these become natural to us, the more the depraved and physical-unreality traits such as evil beliefs, passions and appetites, etc., are supplanted by the wonderful transitional qualities of humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, etc., which then again, in turn, lead us to the spiritual qualities of wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, etc. (115-116)

Mrs. Eddy wanted Christian Scientists to look into their own hearts and turn upon themselves the magnifying lens of Truth that brings to light their errors. She felt that an unwise word or deed of ours is a shovelful of earth thrown upon the grave to which the enemies of our cause would consign Christian Science. We all must learn, when alone, to guard our thoughts, when struggling with mankind, our temper, when in society, our tongue. No reproof, she says, is as potent as the silent lesson of a good example. (Mis. 126:20) There is no limit on how fast we can go in reforming and transforming ourselves, but we should not attempt this too rapidly with our neighbor. “The warfare with one's self is grand. It gives one plenty of employment” (Mis. 118:25). It's a wise dog that scratches his own fleas.

Every minute we are faced with a choice of operating in the calculus of Spirit and Truth, or in the material calculus that counterfeits our divine identity and beingness, and leads only to death. The basis of Christian Science is love loving, returning good for evil; love that sufferith long, and is kind. This, Mrs. Eddy said, is the basis of Christian Science.

Sally: We must learn that Love alone is life. Learning this gives birth to the true man, to reality. Then individuality is universal in its expression and brings about collective salvation, the brotherhood of man. This divine brotherhood can only come about as we lay down the mortal belief of life, substance, and intelligence in matter, and so become one with our divine Principle. The Ego of each one of us is not in ourselves but in the divine Principle, God, from which our reflection, is inseparable. Remember, our Mind, being God, has a reflection or it wouldn’t be Mind.

The Transitional Qualities

Bessie: I sometimes get the feeling that many think they can succeed without what Mrs. Eddy calls “second degree” qualities (115:26), the “transitional” qualities, namely: humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, etc.

Moderator: Those who think that, will be turned sadly awry. These qualities are encompassed in the spiritual qualities of wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, etc, that make up the Principle of our being. And this Principle of our being which encompasses the moral or “transitional” qualities is just as inexorable as the principle of mathematics. When we believe 2x2=5 we suffer from that error in our calculations until it is corrected. Mathematics isn't literature that needs only to be read; neither is Christian Science. Thinking to enter the kingdom of heaven without the “transitional” qualities of humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, etc., is like starting with the letter and thinking to succeed without the spirit. Life and Love demand that we work out our own salvation but this cannot be done without encompassing the “transitional” qualities, the moral qualities. Bringing to light the true man in place of the caricature presented by the senses means the culturing and incorporating of those wonderful transitional qualities in our daily life.

There can be no individuality divided from the divine Principle which includes the transitional qualities. True individuality is the reflection of divine Principle, Love, and must be integrated within the universal being of God. In reality we all come from the same source, so the transitional qualities are innate in us all.

The system of Christian Science enables each one of us to become individually self-governed, and to be a law unto ourselves. Imbibing the spirit and gaining a spiritual understanding of the order, diversification, categories, and system which constitute the Science of Christian Science is the Spirit itself, and makes the letter and Spirit one, and in this oneness the moral, the transitional qualities, are included.

The Bible And Mrs. Eddy

Tina: We have talked a lot about the Bible and about Jesus. What part did the Bible play in Mrs. Eddy's life work?

Florence: We know the Bible was a comfort to Mrs. Eddy during her entire life. After she discovered Christian Science she realized it had prophesied her coming, but the Bible was a closed book until God revealed its meaning to her seventeen years after the publication of Science and Health. It was not until 1883 in the sixth edition that she received the Key to the Scriptures.

I think even Christian Scientists tend to forget that at the time Mrs. Eddy brought the Comforter, Divine Science, the “Christian” conception of Jesus was very limited. Very little was taught of Jesus beyond a crucified Savior dying to appease an angry God who refused the world salvation without the shedding of blood—and that, literally. Further, it was generally believed that man's salvation depended only upon asking forgiveness in His name, etc. So we need only compare the world's concept of God and Jesus before the advent of Mary Baker Eddy in order to perceive how she has revolutionized the world's thinking on these subjects. She resurrected Jesus from a “crucified Lord” to “him, glorified.” She has indeed fulfilled Jesus' promise of the “Comforter” who would reveal all things.

Today, Christian Scientists, and the world in general, have become so accustomed to the higher concept of Jesus revealed by Mrs. Eddy, they scarcely remember what the “Christian” concept of Jesus was a century ago. But it will take much spiritualization of thought to understand all she has written. Centuries will elapse before the world generally becomes aware of what Mary Baker Eddy brought in fulfilling her mission as the second coming of the Christ. But that understanding will come and as we restore Mary Baker Eddy to her rightful status in world consciousness we will also restore the healing ability of Christian Scientists.

Tina: Mrs. Eddy loved her Bible, didn't she?

Moderator: Yes, Tina, all her life she went to it for comfort and guidance. She saw how genuine the Scriptures were. “The genuineness, in the main, of the Scriptures is that the views of their writers exposed them to suffering and violent deaths, and yet they held steadfastly to the facts which they recorded. Had they not been honest in their records they would have been men encountering great suffering in the maintenance of what they knew to be false and by immoral means attempting to establish a cross-bearing Christianity” (EOF. 49). Mrs. Eddy saw the Scriptures as an infallible guide when understood spiritually. She saw them as containing the truth of God and man, of Soul and body.

Victory Prophesied For Her Mission

Anna: Also, Mrs. Eddy loved the Scriptures because they testified of her and foretold her divine mission to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth. This was a herculean task and, as we have seen, Mrs. Eddy stood absolutely alone, just as alone as Jesus had stood nineteen hundred years before. She had to begin where Jesus left off. Her great comfort was her Bible and its prophecy of the ultimate victory of her cause. She had nothing else to lean on. Her help had to come from God, from a higher than human source. No one on earth could know the burden Mrs. Eddy bore in carrying out the divine purpose dictated by God, namely, to find evil to be nothing and divine Love to be All, thus laying in human consciousness the foundations of heaven, through the Science and system embedded in the textbook, where it could be studied, pondered, and learned.

Juliann: Isaiah 54 is an instance where the Bible comfortingly prophesied victory for the Science Mrs. Eddy was to establish on earth: “Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded; ... For thy Maker is thine husband; ... for the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit.... 0 thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.... In righteousness shalt thou be established.... No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.”

Micah, who prophesied the birthplace of Jesus, also prophesied of her that “travaileth”:

“But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little ... yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel [ruler within each consciousness—each spiritual, divinely scientific consciousness] whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travalleth hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel” (Micah 5:2, 3). Mrs. Eddy explains this verse as showing that the “Jesus thought” is the mediator between God (perfect Mind) and man (human mind), or we can say it is the link between the human and the divine. This “Jesus thought” must reign until it has put all enemies under its feet. (See I Cor. 15:25.) When all enemies have been put under its feet we reach Science (the Bride). In the great revelation that came to Mrs. Eddy in 1866 she glimpsed the fact that on the level of Science itself everything is perfect now; everything is God, Mind, Principle and His reflection—“the moon was under her feet”—hence there is then no longer a need for a mediator between God and God's own reflection of Himself. But until Science itself is understood and demonstrated, Christian Science, absolute Christian Science, and divine Science are here to guide us into a spiritual divinely scientific consciousness that knows no evil. As the Master said, “He [Christian Science] shall glorify me.”

Bill: Mrs. Eddy needed every bit of encouragement the Bible could give her. This was especially true in the early years when no student remained loyal for very long. In October of 1876 she wrote Daniel Harrison Spofford, “The mercury of my mind is rising as the world's temperature of thought heats up and the little book ‘sweet in the mouth’ but severe and glorious in its proof, is about to go forth…But, my student, in my lonely chamber I read the coming storm. I feel it gathering…I feel like a tired and wounded soldier of the cross, taken to the rear; but my wounds are enlivening my soldiers, I do believe; if so, God give me more—and teach me all I need—and make me more of a blessing; poor, weak and unworthy, on one hand, august and glorious on the other! Pray for me, dear student.” (Preserved in Alice Orgain Library.)

Mrs. Eddy Laying Her Own Foundations

Moderator:Before Mrs. Eddy could show that Jesus was demonstrating a Principle she had to lay her own foundations. As the Bride-consciousness, she had to bring her foundations with her from heaven, just as though there had never existed such a person as the Galilean Prophet (My. 318:31). The foundations she laid were revealed to her by God, divine Principle; therefore in her writings she shows that Jesus was demonstrating a Principle. The works he did had no more to do with his personality than if he had been a great mathematician demonstrating the principle of mathematics. Our ability to demonstrate mathematics has nothing to do with our so-called physical body; it only has to do with learning and understanding the principle of mathematics. To those who understand the mission of the Comforter, the name Mary Baker Eddy is synonymous with divine Principle, Love. (See My. 120:2.)

Anna: So we can see in fulfilling Jesus' promise that the Comforter would reveal all things, Mrs. Eddy actually had to lay her own foundations because the teaching of Jesus had largely been lost, and its Principle had never been understood. The Bible, through material interpretation, had become a valley of dry bones. (See Ezekiel 37.) Mary Baker Eddy's work was to regenerate the dry bones of the Bible-symbols into living ideas. As Alice Orgain points out, “Surely Abraham, as Bible symbol, is not as great as ‘fidelity’ or idea in Science and Health; surely Moses, as Bible symbol, is not as great as ‘moral courage’ in Science and Health, etc.” (As It Is, p. 48). Also, see Glossary (579-599). Each of the Bible characters, Mrs. Orgain explains, is something we each are innately.

Mrs. Eddy was the first to interpret the Scriptures in their true sense and so reveal the spiritual origin of man. “God requireth that which is past, “ i.e. God required Mrs. Eddy to interpret the Bible in its spiritual meaning so that it could become the foundation for her great discovery that all is infinite Mind infinitely manifested.

Tommy: Further answering Tina's question, “What part did the Bible play in Mrs. Eddy's life work?” it is vital to remember that in “the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him,” Jesus prophesied the coming of divine Science, the Comforter, the spirit of Truth. It was to come in the form of a book. This book was in the hand (hand stands for power) of the angel, meaning in the Mind of Mary Baker Eddy. God was the Author of the textbook, but to make it understandable to us, God used Mary Baker Eddy as His divine channel, just as two thousand years ago He used Jesus as His divine channel for His Message at that time.

Mrs. Eddy's “Key to the Scriptures” made it possible to interpret the Bible spiritually, and to see the Science in it. The Key consists of her seven synonymous terms for God and her revelation of how these seven synonyms operate through the Word, Christ, Christianity, and Science, which today we would call input, process, output, and feedback. Mrs. Eddy also revealed in the textbook how these seven synonyms for God operate on the four levels of spiritual consciousness. Mr. Doorly was the first to discern in the textbook of Christian Science the divine system which Mrs. Eddy had provided as the key to the Scriptures.

Francie: It is interesting that Mrs. Eddy knew that every advancing epoch of Truth would be characterized by a more spiritual apprehension of the Scriptures that would show their marked consonance with the textbook of Christian Science Mind-healing in which she gave us the Science of the Word, the Science of the Christ, the Science of Christianity—in other words, the Science of being. (See Mis. 363:30.)

Moderator: We have been talking about God's messengers, His “two witnesses,” Christ Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy. We have seen that when faith “glows full-orbed in spiritual understanding,” God's messengers will not be looked upon as mere mortals, but will be seen as God, Principle, Love, coming to us as Jesus the Christ, and as Mary Baker Eddy. Those who look for Mary Baker Eddy in her writings will see her as the prophesied woman of the Apocalypse, and will realize that Christian Science originated with God, not with a mortal.

In our Session today we have seen that “the divine must overcome the human at every point” (43:27); all mortal traits and characteristics must be supplanted with the Christ character, as we more and more let the spiritual qualities (S&H page116) replace the depraved qualities of mortal mind. In this way we gradually come to manifest the image and likeness of God, [and this in turn allows us to grow into seeing that we are Mind, Principle, or God].

Only that consciousness which is Love alone can become aware of reality, and become one with it. “The beast bowed before the Lamb,” before the consciousness that is Love (womanhood). Mrs. Eddy says, “It was supposed to have fought the manhood of God that Jesus represented; but it fell before the womanhood of God, that presented the highest ideal of Love” (Hea. 10:5). Jesus, with the manhood qualities of God, proved there is no intelligence, substance, or life in matter. Then Mary Baker Eddy, showing the divine Science that lay behind his ability to give this proof, founded in human consciousness the great truth that All is infinite Mind infinitely manifested, for God is All-in-all. (468:9) During the coming millennium this will all become practical.

Bill: We've talked a lot about “prophecy” and Mrs. Eddy's place in prophecy. Before we leave could we have a word on just what prophecy is?

Moderator: Prophecy considered in the light of Christian Science has a meaning or aspect not recognized by other systems of religion. In Christian Science, prophecy is not merely the tabulating of future events chronologically and then awaiting their coming. This, in effect, would be fatalism, which is paganism. Christian Science is founded on Principle, God, and is demonstrable according to pure spiritual law.

The blessings Christian Science brings are not to be postponed. They are omnipresent, here and now, so one doesn't have to wait for them. To accept all the good that has been prophesied for us, only one thing is necessary, namely: ENLIGHTENMENT, understanding.

In the past, enlightenment has seemed to come only through cycles of time and a gradual development. When the prophets saw that by means of right knowing they could prevent disasters, they were led to prophesy the coming of the Christ, the divine idea that saves and heals.

In Christian Science there can be no prophecy but the prophecy of good, since God infinite good is All-in-all, and there is nothing else that has reality. Speaking of John the Baptist, Mrs. Eddy said: “He who knew the foretelling Truth, beheld the forthcoming Truth” (Mis. 82:6), and this is the true character of prophecy. Anything that was true in the time of the prophets is eternally true. All good is now and always has been self-existent as our true Mind and intelligence. Good requires no time and no thinking process. Good is and always has been spontaneous and immediate, needing no development. In Christian Science we correct things both inside ourselves (character faults) and outside ourselves only in the proportion that we correct our own consciousness.

In Revelation we read, “Behold, I make all things new.” This “I” that makes all things new is your true “I” and everyone's true “I,” since there is only the one I AM that we all are in reality. In Christian Science this “I” is revealed as infinity, since every idea reflects every other idea via divine Principle, God which we are. Therefore, reflecting Truth, infinity, it is our duty and privilege to fulfil prophecy in righteousness, scientifically. Waiting for something to happen is not Christian Science. We reject evil, of any kind, as pure illusion or as Spirit incorrectly viewed. What we are looking at is always Spirit, God, if rightly viewed and beheld.

Any view of prophecy that makes sin and suffering inevitable or which makes progress contingent upon either or the other is contrary to Christian Science. To maintain a mental attitude that postpones our blessings tends to deprive us of them. The fact is that all good is now; there never will be more good than there is this minute. Just as with the principle of mathematics where all mathematical possibilities are now; time and space do not enter.

SESSION II: SOME HIGHLIGHTS —
MRS. EDDY'S FULFILLING OF PROPHECY

Moderator: Today we will be looking more closely at the woman of the Apocalypse, and we will see how Mary Baker Eddy fulfilled St. John's prophecy of this woman. We have seen that the woman of the Apocalypse is also a symbol for each one of us. The “child” we are bringing to birth, through sore travail, is our recognition of our true Christ selfhood. Through the study of our textbook, Science and Health, we each become a mother to this “Child,” to this understanding that Principle and its idea is one, that subject and object is one, and that manhood and womanhood is one and indivisible.

Today we will delineate a few of the highlights in Mrs. Eddy's life as she fulfilled her mission of teaching, guiding, helping, explaining, and nurturing her students in support of the divine seeds she was sowing in human consciousness.

PICKING UP WHERE JESUS LEFT OFF

Mrs. Eddy had to begin where Jesus left off. Jesus showed the ascending footsteps. Mrs. Eddy, in accordance with Jesus' prophecy that the Comforter would “bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26), had to lay the same foundations that Jesus laid before she could go on to her own mission of revealing the motherhood character of God.

The Comforter, or the Bride-consciousness, is a divine Science. A Science shows the motherhood of God because it teaches us in easy steps how we can lay off the mortal and put on the immortal nature of our being.

The only way we can become this Bride-consciousness, which means complete at-one-ment with God Principle, is through the assimilation of the truth in Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science. As we assimilate its teachings, we approach nearer and nearer to this divine Principle. Of this process—the process that leads us to the Bride-consciousness—Mrs. Eddy says: “When you eat the divine body of this Principle [the Principle that is the Bride-consciousness]—thus partaking of the nature, or primal elements, of Truth and Love—do not be surprised nor discontented because you must share the hemlock cup and eat the bitter herbs . . . “(559:23). The Bride-consciousness cannot come unless we lay down the mortal, and laying down the mortal is usually resisted to the hilt, and proceeds slowly through great suffering, sweat, tears, agony. He that overcometh gains the Bride-consciousness, which is always present. Mortal consciousness, however—with it’s adamant of self-will, self-justification, self-love (242:16)—hides and wars against the spirituality that constitutes the Bride-consciousness. (For further explanation of “Bride” see “Definitions” in Appendix.)

Marie: Did Jesus have the Bride-consciousness?

Anna: Yes, Jesus was using Science or the Bride consciousness or he could not have made what Mrs. Eddy calls “his mighty, crowning, unparalleled, and triumphant exit from the flesh.” Only through the Bride-consciousness or an understanding of man's oneness with God, could Jesus have managed such a feat. Jesus is called the Lamb of God because he totally sacrificed the mortal sense of life. And because he got self out of the way he was in a position to wed the Science of Love, the Bride-consciousness. In mathematics we only wed the principle as we get self out of the way and abide strictly with the principle.

Rocky: What is meant when you speak of Mrs. Eddy's manhood reflection of God? How does it differ from her bridal reflection?

Grace: Her “manhood” reflection of God was her wilderness-woman or motherhooding phase, meaning her teaching and all that was necessary to lift the students up to her level of understanding, whereas the Comforter, or the Bride-consciousness, is both masculine and feminine. “The Lamb's wife presents the unity of male and female as no longer two wedded individuals, but as two individual natures in one” (577:4).

The Bride-consciousness has to include the masculine elements since she must bring her own foundations (the ascending or masculine phase) with her from heaven. We will see this more clearly as we go along. The Bride-consciousness, being the full reflection of God, Principle, Love, must encompass the foundations Jesus laid and bring these foundations with her as she comes from heaven. Mrs. Eddy's mission was a descending mission in contrast to Jesus' ascending mission. Her mission started from God instead of teaching mortals how to reach up to Him.

Florence: We saw in our previous session that the woman of the Apocalypse symbolized the mission of Mary Baker Eddy who was to show that the real life of man is entirely separate from the dream of material living. In material living the delusion persists that man and woman are separate. They believe that through physical union they can become creators and create other physical bodies in their own image and likeness, thus usurping the prerogative of the divine creator who creates all spiritually in the image and likeness of divine Mind. The woman of the Apocalypse symbolizes the end of human birth, the end of sin, disease, and death. She symbolizes the fact that lust and hypocrisy will be overcome because of the teaching of the “little book,” which destroys the dragon of Old Theology. The dragon is destroyed because the woman's teaching ushers in a totally new structure of consciousness wherein man finds himself ever beautiful, complete, and perfect, since he is the perfect reflection of a perfect God.

Man Both Masculine And Feminine

The new era brought by the woman shows man in his true nature, both masculine and feminine, a combination of spiritual understanding and perpetual peace. We learn heaven is here, now. We need only awaken out of the Adam-dream to see heaven ever-present.

This divinely scientific view of man may not be fully understood for centuries to come. It is held back by the adamant mortal traits of self-love, self-will, self-justification, which war against spirituality and continue the willful procreation of mortals, the law of sin and death, for sin brings death, and death will only disappear with the disappearance of sin.

Heaven is a divine state of mind, but it is not a breeding ground for mortals. Mrs. Eddy severely and vehemently rebuked James Gilman (artist for Christ and Christmas) when he painted figures of children or cherubs for the eleventh (or ascension) picture, saying indignantly, she “would not have anything of this personality represented which was according to the old idea, as if heaven was a breeding place of personal forms as this world of belief is” (Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 52. See Appendix.)

Who would like to comment further on this subject?

Human Birth A Mirage

Johnny: As the teaching of Science and Health—Mrs. Eddy's “man child”—is assimilated, it replaces materialistic consciousness with spiritual consciousness. From the vantage point of spiritual scientific awareness human birth and death are seen as merely hypnotic suggestion, a mirage, which is dissipated by a correct point of view. This new dimension of consciousness, which the woman of the Apocalypse reveals through her “man child,” will destroy forever the physical plagues imposed by material sense. (575:4)

Our Wedding To God

Bessie: Mrs. Eddy writes that “the Revelator saw also the spiritual ideal as a woman clothed in light, a bride coming down from heaven, wedded to the Lamb of Love.” What does it mean?

Moderator: In Bible symbolism, the woman of the Apocalypse who brings forth the “man child,” the Lamb of Love, is wedded to that “man child,” or Lamb of Love, since the textbook, this “man child,” is in her own Mind. It is Love wedded to its own spiritual idea. When you really understand something, you are wedded to it. The only real marriage is our marriage to God. In divine revelation, material and corporeal selfhood disappear and the spiritual idea is understood. The woman of the Apocalypse illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea (561:15). This coincidence is called “the marriage feast.” Understanding our relationship to God is the “wedding,” the bride wedded to the Lamb of Love.

Billy: What would be the practical consequences of really understanding that?

Tommy: Heaven on earth. It would give back the lost likeness and power of God. It would nullify the belief that man is born of the basest instincts—of “brute instinct” (63:6-7)—the belief responsible for evil traits in mortals: passion, appetites, hatred, revenge, etc. The element misnamed matter must be resolved into its original sin. Human will is that original sin. Sin brought death. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:12, 23). Death is an element of matter, never of Spirit. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Matter, when examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears, says Mrs. Eddy. If God, divine Mind, is all, matter can be nothing but an image in mortal erring mind, which spiritual education eradicates and replaces with the images in the Mind that is Love.

Mary Baker Eddy And Divine Love

Sally: I would like to read from Mr. Gale's notes concerning a class he took with Mrs. Eddy: “I shall never forget the light that shone in her face when we considered the subject of Love. As nearly as I can recall her words, she said, 'God is Love; to love, is to express God, and as God is eternal Life, if we always loved we should always express Life, and never have a belief of death. Hate is the opposite of Love, and leads to death; therefore never hate anything.'” Love alone is Life, so if we are not loving, we are not living. How many tombstones could read: “Died at 30; buried at 80.” We must see the Love of God encircling the universe and man. We must feel Love.

Vindicating The Prophecy

Moderator: We have talked about the woman of the Apocalypse. We will see that in order to fulfil Jesus' prophecy of the twelve stars on woman's crown (560; Rev. 12:1) Mrs. Eddy must present the Science which would bring all humanity back to its original divinity and oneness with “natural good,” God. Nothing but a Science that all could learn step by step would be able to vindicate this prophecy. Science enables man to become aware of his perfect completeness as an ever-present fact. The woman in the Apocalypse who brings forth the “man child,” Science—and with whom, as we have said, Mrs. Eddy identifies herself unmistakably in the 16th to 50th editions of Science and Health, on p. 515:6—“symbolizes generic man.”

The whole Word is Science and Health, which was the result of Mary Baker Eddy's oneness with the Mind of God. Thus, the Mind of God is her true identity. It is, therefore, in her writings that we find her true identity and not in her human personality. This is why anyone who looks for Mrs. Eddy elsewhere than in her writings loses her.

Jesus had a very special relationship with God because of his greater understanding of true facts. It was the same with Mary Baker Eddy. It was because of her unique understanding of God that she was able to fulfil the prophecy of the woman of the Apocalypse.

Johnny: Would Mrs. Eddy's special understanding of God as Love (representing the motherhood characteristics of God) also equate her with generic man?

Moderator: Yes, Johnny, because the woman of the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man (561:22). Generic man here means that all men together constitute the Son of God—generically man is the Son of God. This will come to pass through the spiritual education made available in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. Eventually all mankind will understand its oneness with God.

Tina: What does it mean?

Margie: It means that as all men assimilate the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy they will exchange a belief of being born into a matter body and the sinful misconception of an existence separate from God, for the true facts, namely, being born of Truth and Love, born of God. Then men will all be of one Mind. The Mind of God, Love, will be their only Mind.

Johnny: We could illustrate that by the fact that we are all of one mind concerning the multiplication table.

Juliann: Or by the fact that today we all agree the earth is round whereas a few centuries ago only a few courageous souls dared to voice their conviction that the earth wasn't flat.

When man is Christian Science he is generic man. Because Mrs. Eddy is one with the textbook she wrote, she is generic man. The textbook shows us how to find our identity as God, as incorporeal, divine supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Love, and find man as our image and likeness. Principle and idea is one. The more we actually understand the textbook and Mrs. Eddy's other writings, the more it will be seen that what is in the divine Mind is our only identity. In reality we are an image the divine Mind that has an image and this is the fact or “seed within itself” that enables consciousness to expand and reflect every God-like quality. As we gain in understanding we are translated out of mortal consciousness back into our original God-consciousness that is one with the divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind (115:13).

The way we find our God identity is not so different from the way we identify with the principle of music or math. If we want to learn those subjects, we abide strictly with their principle and don't deviate from the principle of these subjects. If we want to bring forth our God-identity we must stay with the Principle of our being, pay attention to what the textbook teaches, “abide strictly by its rules, heed every statement, and advance from the rudiments laid down” (462:14).

Billy: This is why Mrs. Eddy stressed “unity” so much, isn't it?

Grace: Yes, there can be no unity when there is “elbowing” for position and power: “The noblest work of God is man in the image of his Maker; the last infirmity of evil is so-called man, swayed by the maelstrom of human passions, elbowing the concepts of his own creating, making place for himself and displacing his fellows” (Mis. 294:1). Love is the liberator and gives man the victory over himself. When the victory over self is gained, man joins the fraternity of generic man. True unity comes about as each one reflects divine Principle, and reflects every other idea via this one divine Principle.

Francie: The prophets faintly glimpsed the meaning of the Son of God as it began to form in the matrix of generic consciousness. Then this matrix of generic consciousness brought forth great wonders in the life and demonstration of Christ Jesus, on an individual basis. Nineteen centuries later the same divine matrix brought forth, through the life and demonstration of Mary Baker Eddy, the collective and universal counterpart of Jesus' individual demonstration, called Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy taught that the Christ, which constituted the identity of Jesus and enabled him to do his mighty works, was the identity of all men. Through her scientific system of the seven synonymous terms for God operating through a fourfold calculus of Word, Christ, Christianity, and Science, her textbook shows us how to progressively lay off the “old man” until man is found to be the image of infinite good. While the mission of Jesus might be viewed as proving that there is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter, Mrs. Eddy's mission was to show that “all is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation.” Christian Science shows the omnipresence of present perfection.

Elsie: Mrs. Eddy quotes Rev. Hugh Black as saying: “The birthplace of civilization is not Athens but Calvary” ('02:10).

Moderator: And she then says that “when the human mind is advancing above itself towards the divine, it is subjugating the body, subduing matter, taking steps outward and upwards . . . [rising] from sense to Soul, from earth to heaven” (ibid).

The way is straight and narrow, and the Christian religion is the only one on earth that has “the straight and narrow way of demonstration, every step of which has been explored from cross to crown.” The cross is the inevitable symbol of a united divinity and humanity. Alice Orgain states that pagan religions have no “crosses” and hence no “crowns.” “A few very spiritual seers have glimpsed the truths of being and given them to the people from the point of broad theories, but no other religion has had its demonstrators that bridged the gulf between their vision and the vision of the people, with their own bodies, as did Jesus and Mrs. Eddy—Jesus with his specific temple or body; Mrs. Eddy with the Church body. Jesus bore the specific pains of bodily consciousness; Mrs. Eddy bore the collective and collected pains (mankind's errors) of Church and universal consciousness.

So, we find Mrs. Eddy's “body”—her Principle of being—in her Church, and in its every purpose, and its resurrection therein” (Alice Orgain, As It Is, p. 856. See Appendix.) The Mother Church was Mrs. Eddy's patient. It typified the mortal body, the warfare with the flesh, and how to raise oneself out of the mortal illusion of a matter body. It signifies the cross, something to be overcome through spiritual education. As our understanding of what is in our textbook grows, we are progressively liberated from the slavery of believing we live in a mortal body.

Tommy: As the masculine representative of the spiritual idea, Jesus showed the unpopular upward (ascending) steps, namely, the cross-bearing of giving up the mortal, the toil and sacrifice; in short, the crucifixion of the human in order that the divine could come to light. His mission was to reveal the manhood characteristics of God. He would love to have gathered all humanity under his wings but this was not to be the province of the masculine representative of the spiritual idea. The gathering had to await his second coming in his femininity (Science), or his all-encompassing nature as Love which Mary Baker Eddy presented in Christian Science, the unity of Christianity with Science. But without the cross, the laying down of the mortal, there can be no crown. The cross is what the “builders” have always rejected. “Students love the explanations of Christian Science: God is Love, God is good, God is Mind, etc. This is the crown of Christian Science. But they dislike the cross of Christ—the patient, slow bearing of the cross, they shun. They will not handle animal magnetism. All the cross-bearing they leave to me, while they love the crown. Yet this lesson they will learn” (DCC. P. 198).

Grace: Alice Orgain says man uses his wings to soar (in rising from first seeing that all is mental, to thinking only in terms of ideas, to finally seeing I AM THAT I AM) as Enoch did, and also Moses, Elijah, and Jesus; whereas Jesus in his second coming, as womanhood, descends and “hovers” (Mis. 388:22). Truth's immortal idea, Mrs. Eddy says, sweeps down, not up as in the ascending manhood idea; it sweeps down the centuries, gathering beneath its wings the sick and sinning. (55:15-16) Coming from God it sees only complete perfection. This correct view heals all discord.

No “Third Coming”

Elsie: We have talked a lot about the first and second coming of Jesus. Will there be a third?

Florence: No. When Mrs. Eddy was asked this question she answered unequivocally: “This is the 'second coming' of the Christ and it will be the last” (DCC. 234). Naturally a Science unfolds forever, and each century will bring to light the higher meaning of the textbook. Jesus presented , the fatherhood qualities of God, and Mrs. Eddy completed this figure of God by presenting God's motherhood as a Science that all can learn, and so become the Principle, Love, as we find “the kingdom of God is within you.”

Marie: What is the “second coming” that we hear so much about—when man will be restored to his original perfection which in reality, we understand, he has never lost?

Moderator: Mrs. Eddy says the second coming is another era of the world's awakening, a higher advent in human consciousness of the spiritual idea, the true character of God. This idea, Mrs. Eddy tells us, neither comes nor goes, for it is inseparable from its divine Principle, the ever-present I AM. But the human concept of this idea has its periods of light and shade. The second coming of Christ is the next higher, hence, more spiritual revelation of God's character.

The Christian era, Mrs. Eddy says, presented the first tangible idea of God's character by its inspired man, Jesus. The era of Christian Science ushers in through woman the second appearing of His character, namely, His feminine nature, and this from the necessity of His nature as the Father and Mother of all, the creator, even the complete and ever-present idea of God. Therefore this era comes not through Jesus but through Mary, the type of womanhood and mother of its first and forever appearing which divine Science alone can give, in which we see “we are Life, Truth, and Love when we understand them.”

The “third appearing” or “third baptism” is a different subject entirely, pertaining to the student's progress out of materiality into total spirituality. The third appearing or baptism will present but the disappearing of all else, and establish the supremacy of Spirit. This obliterates the human sense of the divine, takes away all sense of matter, and reveals the final fact that the idea, Christ, is not a materialized or finite man or woman, but is the infinite concept of infinite Mind. (Mis. 205:13)

Difference Between First And Second Coming

By this explanation Mrs. Eddy endeavored to dematerialize, unrestrict, and unlimit our human dream of the divine, our material sense of the spiritual, our finite views of the infinite. She wanted to give us a scientific concept of Jesus and his mission, and of the nature of the Christ.

Jesus' work on earth is done, Mrs. Eddy said. Jesus as an individual finished his glorious earthly career and left earth for heaven—entered into the infinite sense of Life and its manifestation. This was the consummation of his earth mission and it needs no reappearing or repetition to crown its glory.

This scientific concept of man, says Mrs. Eddy, is not the material Jesus, neither is it the material Mary or Martha, but it is the spiritual idea dwelling forever in God, the Father-Mother God, Principle, Love, because this idea is the link in being's chain which indissolubly unites God and man, and the onrushing centuries will ere long yield to the sense of its ascendant glory. (See EOF. pp. 48-49.)

Grace: Mrs. Eddy further distinguishes between the first and second coming in explaining Mark 6:35-44. She states that Jesus no doubt supplied the literal loaf and fish to their sense so as to impress upon them at that period (the Christian era) the fact of his two-fold power, as the way-shower or mediator between the things of the flesh and those of Spirit. His mission on earth was, declaratively and demonstratively, from the beginning to the end, to be the mediator between the flesh and the Spirit, to show, through the senses, the way out of the flesh.

Not so, says Mrs. Eddy, is the Christ's appearing at this age. Today it is to show through Science and not through the senses, the power of Spirit and of Good. It is to spiritualize all the meaning of the Christ, to name Christ the idea and not the person of God, and to impress, at this period, the Science of Spirit on the mind, through Truth, and the phenomena of Mind, and not matter, The “second coming” voices God less in parable and more in the facts of Being. To name Christ the idea and not the person of God must be the true interpretation of the parable of the loaves and fishes, because Jesus could in no other way have made the way for the second appearing of Christ in Science. (See letter to Mrs. E. P. Skinner, DCC. p. 125.)

Moderator: Mrs. Eddy knew that the revelation of the truth of being that had dawned on her had to be founded in human consciousness in such a way that it could be apprehended practically. It must be stated in terms understandable to all mankind. St. John recorded Jesus' prophecy of the dual mission of the woman of the Apocalypse: the God-crowned woman with twelve stars signifies the complete perfection of man which was revealed to Mrs. Eddy; the prophecy of the wilderness-woman signifies her mission to establish Truth in human consciousness through her writing and teaching.

Recess

THE PATH OF THE PIONEER

Moderator: Are there any questions?

Elsie: Isn't it true that few of the great and good people walking this earth have been fully appreciated in their time? It usually remains for future generations to realize how truly great and good they were. Nevertheless they persevered and patiently persisted.

Jackie: Yes, from the world's point of view, Jesus' earthly career ended disastrously. Mrs. Eddy, too, met with scorn, ridicule, and persecution when her discovery “undermined the favorite inclinations of a sensuous philosophy.” To understand, even in part, what Mrs. Eddy brought, the world must see Mrs. Eddy's direct relationship to God.

Seditious Students

Juliann: Very little help came in the years immediately following Mrs. Eddy's discovery. She was harrassed by pulpit, press and the medical profession. But actually the seditious behavior of students she personally took into her fold and taught, caused her the most grief. Her indefatigable laboring with and shepherding of students during her first fourteen years of teaching netted her no loyal follower capable of assisting her in even a minor way.

As the pioneer, Mrs. Eddy stood absolutely alone while every conceivable object was thrown across her path to obstruct her progress. But her great love for humanity and the divine inspiration that continually poured into her Christ-mentality drove her inexorably forward in her efforts to show us what we already are as God, as incorporial, divine, supreme, infinite Mind Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love.

Margie: Because Mrs. Eddy uncovered the carnal mind, it fought back with intent to kill the truth that had exposed it. This is why her every forward step was resisted and met with persecution. Ceaseless toil, self-renunciation, and Love cleared the way for Christian Science. Nothing else could have done it. Mrs. Eddy leaned on the “sustaining infinite,” and carried the day.

Years later, when she recalled the days of poverty, hardship, persecution, and ridicule, she wrote in Miscellany, p. 165, “There is scarcely an indignity which I have not endured for the cause of Christ, Truth.” When the pulpit launched its furious attacks on her, she met its venom and vehemence with the example of him who “when he was reviled, reviled not again.” Her conclusion in Rudimental Divine Science states: “The true understanding of Christian Science Mind-healing never originated in pride, rivalry, or the deification of self. The Discoverer of this Science could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, of friendlessness, toil, agonies, and victories under which she needed miraculous vision to sustain her, when taking the first footsteps in this Science.”

Character of Revelator

Margie: Sometimes you hear someone say they read Science and Health and benefit from it, but they feel a certain antipathy toward Mrs. Eddy. Doesn't this seem very unnatural?

Johnny: Yes, it's unnatural because the Revelator and her revelation can't be separated. The bearer of God's message must of necessity be God's Messenger. The Messenger is to be judged by the truth or falsity of the message she brings. Mrs. Eddy didn't originate or create the message. She listened, and received the message only because she had spiritually prepared herself to receive it. Her mission was to bring the message to waiting humanity.

Sometimes people hope to change the message by rejecting the Messenger. They don't realize that the truth or falsity of a statement is in no sense dependent upon the one who gives utterance to it. What we have to do is to prove all things and hold fast that which is good. We should not waste our time contending for or against personalities.

Sally: In Mrs. Eddy's day, as in the time of Jesus, many thought they could get rid of the message from God by persecuting the messenger. They didn't see that it was impossible for a person to make or unmake the truth. Nothing a person says, thinks, or does can change or affect the truth. As we said before, he who would separate the Revelator from her revelation is but “a thief and a robber.” Who can separate 2x2=4 from its principle?

Bill: The Revelator and her revelation are inseparable since Mrs. Eddy had to be at that point of understanding that was able to receive the revelation; she had to be in rapport with divine Mind. And isn't it true that without the Revelator or messenger, suffering humanity wouldn't know of God's message or the existence of a Savior. Mrs. Eddy appeared upon the scene of human life to act a higher part than others in life's drama. She impersonated good beyond others. She interpreted good more clearly, and illustrated her interpretation by its effect in uplifting the human thought and standard morally, spiritually, and physically. She taught that all is infinite Mind infinitely manifested, for God is All-in-all. This uncovered error, good's opposite, as unreal.

Anna: She also taught that the worship of personality is but another form of heathen idolatry. The character of God is the essence of good. Its nature and tendency is all that should be worshipped or loved in man or God. Worshipping thus, we assimilate the qualities of good in ourselves and the quantity is increased within us. We then impart involuntarily this quality, even as a flower gives off its fragrance involuntarily.

Moderator: As Bill said, the Revelator or messenger had to hear and understand it or she couldn't have written it down and given it to others. To carry out her mission as God's messenger, Mrs. Eddy had to be oblivious of human self. Any materiality or self-will would have demoralized her motives, her Christlikeness, and dethroned her power as the Christ-messenger to our age.

Kathleen: Mrs. Eddy never thought of herself, but only of the revelation she had received, and of needy humanity to whom she would bring it. It is our privilege to love and honor the one who brought us the Christ message.

Humanly, Mrs. Eddy paid a fearful price to bring mankind this saving Science. As the pioneer of Christian Science she stood alone, smiting error with the sword of Truth. “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” (Ret. 30:1). Mrs. Eddy could not have accomplished what she did had she not prayed scientifically. It was her scientific understanding that enabled her to experience the ever-operative Christ-power. In every detail of her life she turned to the divine Principle for guidance, and trusted completely in the divine Principle, always acting in accordance with the dictates of that divine Principle. She listened, and heard, and hastened to act on what Principle told her. Because of Mrs. Eddy's total spiritual honesty she was a clear windowpane through which more and more light could flood in, and thus her spiritual understanding was continually increased.

It is much the same in arithmetic. The more we adhere strictly to the principle of arithmetic, the more mathematical understanding we gain. We never doubt that the principle of arithmetic is working for us and will solve our mathematical problems if we yield completely to the principle of mathematics and don't interject our own opinions. This is the way Mrs. Eddy sought protection from persecution. Like David, she never left her dwelling “in the secret place of the most High.”

Margie: Considering the hatred and persecution this new doctrine stirred up against Mrs. Eddy, one marvels at the way she unfailingly obeyed her own counsel to overcome evil with good at all times and under all circumstances. We must know ourselves—that we are incorporeal divine, supreme infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love, that God is not separate from the wisdom He bestows—then God will supply both the occasion and the wisdom for a victory over evil. This was her sublime instruction. Hers was indeed a religion of Love, an all encompassing Love.

Because Mrs. Eddy always started every thought from God, she always ended with God, Love. She knew the foundation stone is at the top with Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. Starting right, she ended right—from “the kingdom of God within you”—thus she could unfailingly feel love for her enemies and never cease in her efforts to return good for evil and bless all upon whom her thoughts rested. Her great power lay in the fact that she could demonstrate what she taught.

Newspaperman Healed

Florence: Margie spoke of Mrs. Eddy's strict obedience to her own rule to overcome evil with good at all times and under all circumstances. On countless occasions Mrs. Eddy proved the usefulness of this rule and the blessing it carries. An illustration might be her handling of some newsmen who came to Concord to slander and malign her.

One of these newsmen later admitted that if anyone ever had just cause to hate these newsmen, Mrs. Eddy did. They had come to dig up scandal, to vilify, defame, and crucify her in the press if they possibly could. “We came,” he said, “to expose and denounce her, to hold her up to scorn and ridicule. This would be 'news.' “

The man who headed the group represented a large New York newspaper. He was a callous, unfeeling rascal. This man had for years been afflicted with a painful cancerous growth of the throat, which at times seemed more than he could endure.

Mrs. Eddy knew at which hotel they were staying and asked one of her loyal students to phone these newsmen and ask to speak to the head man. When the student called and asked for the chief, the young reporter who answered the phone said, “He's lost his voice but I'll give him any message you want to leave.” The student, obedient to Mrs. Eddy's instruction, said, “Tell the chief to come to the phone and just listen to what I have to say. He doesn't have to talk.” Annoyed and angry, the chief took the receiver and listened for a few minutes. Then he hung up and turned to his fellow newsmen. Not only could he speak, but he was completely healed.

The newsmen were deeply moved. They had heard that Mrs. Eddy could heal, but they hadn't believed it. Now they had absolute proof. They packed their bags and went home. Mrs. Eddy had conquered through love, proving that Love is the liberator and we must love our enemies or we will never lose them. (Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy. See Appendix).

Spiritual Origin of Man Rejected

Moderator: Today the weapon used most often against Christian Science is to discredit it as old-fashioned philosophical idealism. But in Mrs. Eddy's day this was not the case; the weapons then were fierce and deadly, The war was to the death. As already indicated, much of the enmity and hostility from certain sections of the ministry and the medical world, in which the press joined, was aroused by the implications of Mrs. Eddy's central theme, namely, the spiritual origin of man. Mrs. Eddy rejected mortal mind's concept that man is made up of “brain, blood, bones, and other material elements.” She also rejected the theory that mortal mind's sensations can reproduce man, can form blood, flesh, and bones. Cause, she said, does not exist in physical forms (475 and 262:27) anymore than cause exists in an image or in a shadow. Cause exists in Mind, God; and Mind is Father (586:9) where everything originates spiritually. But remember, everything that originates in Mind, God, is already fulfilled, is already a fact (Truth), and facts or Truth know nothing about being created and then developing and maturing toward fulfilment. A fact in any science is without beginning and ending. Two times two has always been four, as a fulfilled fact.

This is why Mrs. Eddy uses the symbolism “ Father—Mother” so frequently in connection with God. Her Glossary in Science and Health defines Father as Mind [cause], and Mother as Love Fulfilment]. It means that every right desire (cause, Mind, or Father) is already fulfilled (Love or Mother)—the Principle and its idea or reflection is one. In mathematics, the answer to every problem already exists in the principle of mathematics. It is the same in the Principle of man's being. “Before they call, I will answer” (Isa. 65:24). Every contingency is provided for in things inherencies. Understanding alone is needed. From time immemorial man believed that life and sensation, intelligence, and substance were in the material form, just as man believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Natural science proved the latter to be misconceptions, and Christian Science has proved that soul is not in body; life, truth, intelligence, and substance are not in body as mortals think and have been taught to believe. Life, truth, intelligence, and substance are in God, Mind.

What looks like “matter” is merely shadow, and the shadow has no life, truth, intelligence, or substance abiding in it. A shadow cannot think; it has no substance, no intelligence. Your image in the mirror cannot think. It has no substance, no intelligence, no life abiding in it. It is only imaging forth what stands in front of the mirror. This is why Jesus said: Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father (your source—the source of your life, substance, intelligence, truth) which is in heaven. To think of matter or matter's sensations as being the creator of man is usurping the prerogative of the divine Mind, and breaking the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” God, Mind, is the only creator. The divine Mind creates mentally, spiritually, not physically, or materially.

Because this teaching totally reversed the human mind's conceptions, it was considered blasphemous. But just as astronomical science has destroyed the false theory concerning the relations of the celestial bodies, Christian Science will destroy the greater error as to our terrestrial bodies. (122:32)

To accomplish this we need “the new tongue” which Mrs. Eddy says is the spiritual meaning as opposed to the material. It is the language of the Soul Instead of the senses; it translates matter into its original language, which is Mind, and gives the spiritual instead of the material signification. (Hea. 7:6-10)

Florence: Mrs. Eddy did try to veil her statements and tiptoe into the more startling departures from Old Theology. Her message, however, got through to the medical profession, and even more to the ministers of the Gospel. They were quick to discern that Mrs. Eddy was challenging the established conviction that man is wombed and tombed in matter. Mrs. Eddy was hailed as a race annihilist, just as Jesus had been looked upon as a race annihilist by the high priests and doctors of ecclesiastical law when he pronounced his curse on motherhood, with his saying, “blessed are the wombs that never bear,” along with his specific denunciation of marriage: Matt. 22:30; Mark 12:25; 13:17; Luke 20:34, 35; Matt. 24:19, etc. Because Mrs. Eddy taught the spiritual origin of man, she was looked upon as a tool of Satan and the representative of evil.

Tommy: The Christian Science Journal of March, 1885, carried a quote from the sermon of the Reverend A. J. Gordon, illustrating how determined the clergy were to steer “innocent” people away from such a dangerous doctrine as Christian Science: “One has only to open the published volumes of its lady apostle in this city to find such a creed of pantheism and blasphemy as has rarely been compounded.”

Bill: That Mrs. Eddy was seen as a deadly threat to the power structure of the religious establishment is obvious from the alarm sounded by the London Times (May 26, 1885): “ .. . Clergymen of all denominations are seriously considering how to deal with what they regard as the most dangerous innovation that has threatened the Christian Church in this region for many years ......”

Anna: They didn't see that Mrs. Eddy had not come to destroy anything. She only came to show us that the Mind which is God is the only Mind and therefore it is our Mind. She showed man, reflecting the Mind of God, is an infinite spiritual calculus forever unfolding divine ideas, so that every need is taken care of. And she ended Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by giving her interpretation of the twenty-third Psalm: “[Divine Love] is my shepherd; I shall not want” (578:5). Man, reflecting God, cannot “want” for home, companionship, or anything that makes for pure happiness.

(Note to the Reader., That bracketed expression [Divine Love] (578:5) is in the original. Usually bracketed expressions are interpolated editorial comment and not part of the quote.)

Francie: Mrs. Eddy had cherished the hope that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance, but coming face to face with “the fixedness of mortal illusions and the human hatred of truth” (330:4) caused her to revise her thinking and to estimate that centuries would intervene before the truths in Science and Health would be understood sufficiently to be fully demonstrated. (Ret. 84:1)

Moderator: Man's hatred of Truth, Christ, stems from the ancient struggle of self-will against the will of God, divine Love. The flesh warreth against Spirit. The suppositional opposites of divine, infinite Spirit are the five physical senses which must yield to the infinite Spirit, Love.

Why?

Because Christian Science is “determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him glorified.” We should know ourselves and each other only as God knows us—as glorified.

Billy: Why should we know ourselves and each other as glorified?

Moderator: Because all consciousness is Mind, God. The shadow or the image can't think, can it, Billy?

Everything that comes to us has to come as consciousness, and since consciousness is Mind, what is appearing is actually Mind's presence, God's presence, and it can only bless us. Knowing this casts out all fear. Understanding this, makes “Truth and right our sole reliance,” and inspires us to “labor on” until we reach that point of understanding where we see all good is present and always has been present as “a gift,” something we don't have to labor for.

SESSION III: IMPERSONAL NATURE OF
MRS. EDDY'S DISCOVERY

Moderator: Today we will go on discussing how Mrs. Eddy fulfilled all the scriptural prophecies made concerning her. We will see that she always made it crystal clear that it was the truth revealed to her by divine Mind—the truth that found expression through her—that was the Leader of the Christian Science movement, It was never a corporeal personality that was leading. She always directed everyone to her writings and insisted that there alone she could be found.

TRUTH ALONE TO BE CONTEMPLATED

Bill: Many student “Memoirs” record that Mrs. Eddy constantly turned the thoughts of her followers away from herself as a human personality: “Do not think of me; keep your mind fixed on God” (DCC. p. 127:7-8). The only thing to be contemplated was the divine revelation—the system and Science that had come to the world from God through her. Mrs. Eddy knew that her Science was the Comforter Jesus had promised, that would teach humanity all things spiritual.

Johnny: She made it clear she was aware of her divine mission. In Retrospection, page 70:15 she first states that no one can ever take the place of Jesus. Then she states that no person can take the place of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and that this second appearing of Jesus is unquestionably the spiritual advent of the advancing idea of God.

Mrs. Eddy exhibited the Christ-spirit with such unmatched excellence and perfection that her place as Revelator, Discoverer, and Founder will be assured until the end of time. The second appearing of Jesus is a wholly spiritual appearing.

All That Has Gone Before Embraced in Her Teaching

Bill: In Science, or in the progress of mankind, that which comes last always embraces that which has gone before. We know that the teachings of Jesus embraced and fulfilled the teachings of the entire Bible. In the same way, the first appearing of Jesus—as “Master,” as showing forth the manhood character of God—was embraced in the Womanhood of his “second appearing,” as Mrs. Eddy says in Retrospection, page 70:20. This second coming “is the Lord from heaven” (I Cor. 15:45, 47). It ushers in world salvation and stands for the complete spiritualization of the whole human consciousness, finding man to be a spiritual calculus of infinite divine ideas. A Science of ideas is all embracing.

Grace: It seems perfectly natural to me that the teachings of Jesus in his first coming—of denying, cross bearing, forsaking all materiality, etc.—should be embraced in the teachings of his second coming as revealed by Mary Baker Eddy. His second coming, as a Science, is the “advancing idea of God” because affirmations of God's infinite goodness and Allness would include the cross-bearing incident to denying error and forsaking all materiality, just as affirming 2 x 2 = 4 would include the answer, the answer to any lie about that fact.

Elsie: I don't understand the logic in that.

Grace: It simply means that when you make a positive statement such as God, good, is All, it includes the negative that evil then is nothing. When you have a fact such as 2 x 2 =4, it includes the answer to all the denials, such as 2 x 2 = 5, or 2x 2 =6, etc. You can exchange 2 x 2 = 5 for 2 x 2 = 4, but once you know that 2 x 2 = 4 you can't exchange it for 2 x 2 = 5. The false always surrenders to the true because the false is only a suppositional opposite.

The ascending, manhood, or Jesus-steps are always the laying down of the mortal. The affirmation of God's infinite goodness includes the concept of laying down of the mortal.

Marie: In a way, this is what the tenth picture in Mrs. Eddy's illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas, shows: Jesus in his first coming has been encompassed in his “second coming.”

Bill: That would fulfill Jeremiah's prophecy (31:22): “A woman shall compass a man.” Compass means to understand. The matrix of Life and Love always compasses, understands, the calculus of Truth—the calculus of Spirit and Truth.

Moderator: As long as the manhood and womanhood of God are two—His two witnesses—they can only reveal the whole Truth “in a degree.”

The “Two Witnesses”

Rookie: Since our Moderator brought up the subject of the two witnesses, could we have a fuller explanation of their spiritual significance?

Bill: The two witnesses are Christ Jesus and Christian Science. As we have seen, they could not remain standing as two. The denials, the cross bearing, the forsaking of all materiality, all that constituted the upward “ascending manhood steps of Jesus in his first coming, could not continue forever. There had to be an end to the struggle for perfection; and the second coming presented the answer, namely: the scientific ultimate of this God-idea that will be the individual, forever incorporeal, and infinite complete reflection—by all humanity—of all that Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love is.

Elsie: To reveal this truth that man now is God's image and likeness, and to reveal the way to reach and accept this truth, was really Mrs. Eddy's God-ordained mission, then. She actually ushered in a completely new structure of consciousness.

Science Baptizing the Universe in Love

Moderator: Yes, that is right, Elsie. The final result of Mrs. Eddy's work on earth will be to baptize the universe in Love, so that only Love's presence will be seen and felt. Mrs. Eddy gives us a glimpse of her vision when she tells us she saw the love of God encircling the universe and man, filling all space. This divine Love, she said, so permeated her consciousness that she loved with Christ-like compassion everything she saw. This divine reflection brought into expression the beauty of holiness, the perfection of being, which healed and saved and regenerated everyone who turned to her for help. This is an instance of the “two witnesses” becoming one. There was no longer anything to deny or cast out. Love was All-in-all.

Margie: Mrs. Eddy was often in communion with divine Love where she saw that all things are put under our feet. This Love was so manifest it exceeded anything she could describe. It was a Love in which there was no sense of evil or antagonism. All error was dissolved in this Love and nothing remained but the sea of God's immeasurable Love. Such revelations of Love can only come to a consciousness in which the “two witnesses” have become one.

A Mother's Account of Mrs. Eddy's Love

Sally: That Mrs. Eddy was also able to lift the thoughts of others to see this same all-pervading Love, is seen in the experience of a mother with two small children who attended the 1897 “visitor's day” at Pleasant View. The mother relates that her seven-year old daughter had a very painful swelling on the top of her little head. After the speeches, Mrs. Eddy received the guests. The two children were ahead of the mother, who relates:

I wish I could make the world know what I saw when Mrs. Eddy looked at those children. It was a revelation to me. I saw for the first time the real Mother-Love, and I knew that I did not have it. It is impossible to put in to words what the uncovering of my own lack of real Mother-Love meant to me.

As I turned in the procession and walked toward the line of trees in the front of the yard, there was a bird sitting on a limb of a tree, and I saw the same Love poured out on that bird that I had seen flow from Mrs. Eddy to my children. I looked down at the grass and the flowers, and there was the same Love resting on them. It is difficult for me to put into words what I saw. This Love was everywhere, like the light; but it was divine, not mere human affection.

I looked at the people milling around on the lawn and I saw it poured out on them. I thought of the various discords in this field, and I saw, for the first time, the absolute unreality of everything but this infinite Love. It was not only everywhere present, like the light, but it was an intelligent presence that spoke to me, and I found myself weeping as I walked back and forth under the trees and saying out loud, “Why did I never know you before? Why have I not known you always?”I don't know how long it was until my boy came to me and said, “Come, mother, they are going home.” As I got into the carriage and drove back to the hotel that same conscious intelligence and Love were still everywhere. It rested upon everything I was aware of.When we got back to the hotel, there was no swelling on my child's head.For weeks this experience had a strange effect on me. I could not bear to hear anyone speak in a cross, ill-tempered tone, or do anything that would cause pain or mental anguish.Each time I saw Mrs. Eddy I had a wonderful revelation of God. I know she is no ordinary woman. God has anointed her with the oil of gladness above her fellows, for she “loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.” (From a letter preserved in the Orgain Library.)

Anna: It is obvious that this mother with the two children did not go to the Pleasant View gathering to “get” something from Mrs. Eddy. She went with a heart full of love and gratitude and a divine giving-sense. This made her receptive to the love that flowed out freely from Mrs. Eddy's thought. Had she gone with the thought of “getting”—even getting a healing for the little girl—she would not have been receptive enough for the revelation she experienced. Like produces like. Love speaks to Love, or as Mrs. Eddy once said, “God demands God.” In her interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, Mrs. Eddy says, “And Love is reflected in love.” This is obviously what the mother experienced.

Florence: Also, what Sally just read shows how the two witnesses became one, namely, Love was wedded to its own spiritual idea where Love never loses sight of loveliness. When we accept the one Mind as our Mind, we can only see and express the divine Principle, Love, “for Love is with me.” When we are clad in the panoply of Love we too, like Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy, can demonstrate the Science of Love, our divine Principle. Then there is no further need for the crossbearing of denials, forsaking, and overcoming materiality. The struggle is over, and we reflect our Father-Mother God as the adorable One. The fight with the dragon ends when each one, individually, reflects both the manhood and womanhood qualities of God. Then we are “the Lamb's wife” meaning the unity of male and female ... as two individual natures in one; and in this compounded spiritual individuality—this divinely united spiritual consciousness—there is no impediment to eternal bliss (577:9); the “two witnesses” are one.

Tina: This would end the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, wouldn't it?

Anna: Yes, the real senses of man are spiritual and rise above the evidence of the physical senses, rebuking their testimony. The spiritual senses show the Ego-man to be the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle. This one Ego or Mind “is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things” (281:14).

Moderator: Yes, Anna, the real senses of man abide in Spirit; and the senses of Spirit abide in Love; so man would no longer be aware of what the material senses now seem to be aware of, because to infinite ever-present Love, all is Love, and there isn't any error. (567:7) When there is nothing to war against, manhood has yielded to womanhood. They have become one.

But before this yielding of manhood to womanhood takes place, there is a long night of warfare. “There remaineth, it is true, a rest for the people of God; but we must first have done our work” (Mis. 216:3). Mrs. Eddy was no exception; she had the same battles to fight that the students had.

The Carpenters' Visit to Mrs. Eddy

Myfirst visit with the Carpenters was in 1945. Mr. Carpenter, Sr. had at one time been Mrs. Eddy's secretary and was a member of her household for a year. He told me that when he and his wife first visited Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant View she told them of the terrible experience when Dr. Eddy was arrested for murder and how she had remained on her knees in prayer most of the night preceding the trial. In the morning she felt an urge to go to the library. Here she found a parallel case on record, and it proved to be of vital interest in the trial.

Billy: Why was Dr. Eddy arrested for murder? What had he done?

Moderator He was falsely accused. It was a diabolical plot to throw discredit on the blameless life of Dr. Eddy and, by implication, on Mrs. Eddy. It was a strange and sinister conspiracy so cleverly contrived as at first to deceive the grand jury of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but the indictment against Dr. Eddy was quashed by the District Attorney upon receiving confessions from the guilty parties.

Billy: Was anyone hurt or murdered?

Moderator: No. It was just an atrocious and wicked hoax—an unsuccessful attempt to injure Dr. Eddy and cause grief to Mrs. Eddy.

Mr. Carpenter said that in pondering why she talked about this horrendous experience (and the evil motives of Dr. Eddy's accusers) he concluded it was to point out what it really meant to be a Revelator to this age. The path to such spiritual dominion and divine revelation had been suffering, struggles, prayer.

No doubt Mrs. Eddy discerned that young students—such as the Carpenters were at the turn of the century—had a glorified concept of her life as the Revelator. She made them aware it meant being attacked and persecuted, that her mission involved uncovering the most sinister motives. Because Mrs. Eddy exalted God, the evil was uncovered to her. Like Jesus, Mrs. Eddy was “despised and rejected of men,” and like Jesus she returned blessing for cursing. From this she never swerved, because she knew it “saves retracing and traversing anew the path from sin to holiness.”

Sally: In that experience Mrs. Eddy related to the Carpenters we see an illustration of how Mrs. Eddy fulfilled the prophesied role of the God-crowned woman and wilderness-Mother. The wilderness Mother had to uncover error and show it to be pure illusion before it could be obliterated.

Tommy: Mrs. Eddy voluntarily came down from her vision of flawless perfection (symbolized by the God-crowned woman) to fulfil this motherhood role of teaching and lifting humanity to her vision. She had to begin where the students were in their thinking, in order to found her discovery in human consciousness. In no other way could she fulfil the prophesied role of “wilderness woman” or wiIderness-Mother. No one on earth understood the divine Science she brought, so it was up to her to make it understood, to teach it.

Wilderness—Mother's Flight From Dragon

Marie: Why does the Revelation of St. John indicate that the wilderness-Mother twice fled before the face of the dragon?

Moderator: Teaching and mothering are human activities, Marie, a suffer-it-to-be-so-now course that stirs up the dragon or the “drag on” of Old Theology because of its admission that there is error abroad instead of the omnipresence of present perfection. The admission that there are students who need teaching and healing is an admission of duality, which cannot efface the dragon; it only leads towards the dragon's obliteration.

The “man child” (Rev. 12:5, see S & H 565:6) which the woman brought forth was Truth or Science and Health—the “little book” in the hand of the angel. The “angel” is just another name for Mary Baker Eddy or the Christ-Mind she manifested in bringing the “little book.” Through the teaching of Science and Health we learn life in and of Spirit.

The truth which the “man child” or Science and Health launched exposed materiality as nothingness, as without life, truth, intelligence, or substance. This exposure aroused the forces of entrenched materialism—the dragon, Old Theology—which didn't want to surrender its crown, its ability to “hold Spirit in the grasp of matter.” It fiercely resisted this new influx of spiritual light which threatened its ancient realm of darkness.

Through all this cruel persecution, however, Mrs. Eddy clung to the promise of ultimate victory, implied in the prophecy Jesus dictated to St. John on the Isle of Patmos. When she saw her trials and tribulations within St. John's great impersonal framework in the Book of Revelation she gained comfort and confidence to persevere.

Kathleen: Mrs. Eddy constantly went to the Bible for comfort, didn't she?

Florence: Yes, she has been recorded as saying that the Bible was her source of comfort for forty years. She knew that the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah was one of the prophecies of her coming, and she often read its promise: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn.” Isaiah gave her the comforting message that temporary opposition and worldly hate only augured future success.

World-wide Recognition of Mrs. Eddy

Bill: And we know that before she left in 1910 Mrs. Eddy received world-wide recognition. Her cause was considered an unprecedented success. After the lapse of over seventy years it is difficult today to realize the immense interest the world took in Mrs. Eddy's final years. Mrs. Eddy, her household, and the whole Christian Science movement, as it revolved around her, were registered in every U.S. newspaper office and in those of other lands too as first-class copy. Mark Twain's scurrilous book and articles condemning Mrs. Eddy had focused great attention on her because of Twain's enormous popularity.

However, when the New York World brought its “Petition of 'Next Friends' “ suit, and sank to an all-time low in its efforts to discredit Mrs. Eddy and her works, a tremendous rallying to her defense took place on the part of almost every newspaper in the United States and many in other lands. This interest, once aroused, in the spirit of fair play, continued. The country's most prominent journalists all sought interviews with Mrs. Eddy, and all came away with good report. These happenings bore out once more Mrs. Eddy's quote from Shakespeare: “Sweet are the uses of adversity; which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head” (66:3).

Even Mark Twain had a change of heart. Whether it was this magnificent rising to Mrs. Eddy's defense on the part of almost every newspaper in the United States and many in far-off lands, or Twain's own receptiveness to the love Mrs. Eddy poured out on the world in her daily prayers; or whether it was seeing a dear relative healed through Christian Science, I don't know. But Mark Twain's biographer leaves the impression that Twain deeply regretted his cruel assault on Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science.

Moderator: It was the healing of his much beloved daughter that brought about his change of heart.

Bill: Thank you. The biographer says, “I was at that period interested a good deal in mental healing and had been treated for neurasthenia with gratifying results. Like most of the world, I had assumed from his published articles that he condemned Christian Science.... When I confessed rather reluctantly one day the benefit I had received, he surprised me by answering: 'Of course you have been benefited. Christian Science is humanity's boon. Mother Eddy deserves a place in the Trinity as much as any member of it. She has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed, except as the merest guesswork. She is the benefactor of the age... (Mark Twain, A Biography, by Albert Bigelow Paine, Vol. III, page 1271).

By 1910 Mrs. Eddy's fame reached an all-time high, but evil forces, both inside and outside the movement have continued their efforts to erase all traces of the honor, praise, and gratitude due her as God's messenger commissioned to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth. With every passing century the true greatness of Jesus has more and more come to light. Centuries may intervene before Mrs. Eddy's true mission and message is fully grasped and her colossal stature as the world's greatest Scientist is generally recognized.

No attack can touch a truly great figure. It couldn't touch Jesus. It can't touch Mary Baker Eddy. As the Persians say, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Francie: Because these same forces of evil tried and failed to eradicate the name and place of Jesus and his teaching from human history and memory, they will likewise fail in their attempt to erase Mrs. Eddy's name and place as “the greater light.” She brought the Science that makes it possible for each one of us to receive revelation direct from God, and for this we owe her endless homage, reverence, love, and gratitude. She revealed that our own true Mind is God, is infinite good.

To love and honor the Revelator is loving and honoring God. This love and appreciation is not personal worship. Mrs. Eddy says that the Scriptures and Christian Science reveal “the way,” and personal revelators will take their proper place in history, but will not be deified. (Mis. 308:8) We show our love for God when we love the individual through whom God has worked to bring light to mankind. It is her purity of thought that we love and reverence—that purity of thought that was able to hear God's message and then give it to suffering humanity. It is to that purity of thought that we owe endless loyalty and devotion.

Moderator: Can anyone else think of a reason why Mrs. Eddy and Jesus were cruelly maligned and vilified while carrying out their holy, God-ordained missions on earth?

Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy A State of “Natural Good”

Anna: There is perhaps a deep and solemn reason. In reality Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy were, subjectively, that state of “natural good” that is God's pure reflection.

In her book, Angelic Overtures, p. 975, Alice Orgain explains that Jesus represented the seven days as numerals of infinity, since he embraced the full seven in one consciousness. His mission, like Mary Baker Eddy's, was to propel human consciousness to Love, to union with divine Principle, Love.

“Natural good” (119:21) represents subjective rather than objective consciousness but until subjective consciousness is objectively reached by others, one who has received an initial revelation, such as Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy did, is set apart from every other consciousness and every other man's “hand” is against him. This explains the persecution of Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy.

Johnny: Both Jesus and Mrs. Eddy experienced this antagonism from others in spite of the fact that they both received the ultimate vision of man's oneness with God. Jesus subjectively, as Anna just said, fully reflected the Mind of God, the full seven synonymous terms for God as numerals of infinity. The cross that he bore was self-made or accepted in order to be the WAYSHOWER (494:5). Mrs. Eddy also received the subjective revelation of Science as “the numerals of infinity,” or the objective “seven days,” as one nightless day. But of course others didn't see what she was seeing, so their objective necessity compelled her to fulfil retroactively what Jesus prophesied concerning the seven churches. She was therefore forced to present the one nightless day as seven days, or seven ascending footsteps. The seven ascending steps must be made in order to purify and clarify our conceptions on the basis of specific principles, otherwise we would just be building a Babel tower of human opinions. The foothold must be in heaven. We must lay heavenly foundations in order to build the city (consciousness) foursquare—four- square meaning built on the Word, Christ, Christianity, and Science. (See Alice Orgain, Angelic Overtures to Christ and Christmas, p. 975.)

Margie: Before we continue I would like to add to what Johnny just said in regard to others not seeing what Mrs. Eddy was seeing. In talking with James Gilman who did the pictures in Christ and Christmas, Mrs. Eddy said to him: “Oh, if others could only see what I see, how they would work and strive to express nothing but the spirit of Truth. Because I see these things and press them upon students greatly—this [being the] necessity of practise in obedience to Truth—they often turn upon me with their darkness, thus making my burden greater and greater, for I must consequently labor and watch lest this mark my thought and I reflect it upon them again” (Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 88). Mrs. Eddy endeavored at all times to keep her mind filled with Truth and Love, but when active open hatred and antagonism was expressed toward her, she had to work to keep it from affecting her thinking. It became a burden.

Bride As God

Moderator: Anna drew our attention to Mrs. Eddy's reference to “natural good” (119:21). Mrs. Orgain makes this interesting comment on God as “natural good” in her little book, Distinguishing Characteristics, p. 47:

Mother is called “God” for the first time in the “Glossary” of this fiftieth edition, while Father is only “commonly called God.”... While Mother is God, it is completed Mother, which is Bride, for Bride is “Love God wedded to its own spiritual idea [man]” (575:3). Revelation, 21st chapter, speaks of the Bride in the third verse in the following language:

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,” and Mrs. Eddy correlates “the Lord God Almighty” (576:10) with the “Lamb's wife” (577:4). For the Word is God (John 1:1). Mother as God is but the Trinity of forces, “Life, Truth and Love,” while the full definition of God is given as “Good” in the Glossary; and good adds to the Trinity of forces (expressed as “omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresence”), “omniaction,” corresponding to man.

Thus God plus man is the full God, or Word, Bride. Until man, or expression, is added to God, God is merely a compound of heavenly hopes and aspirations of man, typed by the Woman crowned with twelve stars, distant heavenly light, which comes down to earth only as man weds this heavenly light. Thus the Bride, or city foursquare, is “the Word and the wedding of this Word to all human thought and action” (My. 153:28). The fiftieth edition presented two new statements which describe its import: “God is natural good” (119:21) and “the natural order of heaven comes down to earth” (118:31).”

Juliann: Jesus said, “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: Again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John 16:28).

Our ultimate goal is “the Son of man which is in heaven” (John 3:13)—the ascending and descending being one, God is realized to be “natural good” (119:21). In Science itself there is no ascending or descending, no transfiguration or translation. The gates of Science are open to God only, as “natural good.” Our true being is natural good.

Father-Mother Explained

Moderator: I have been asked why Mrs. Eddy used the term “Father-Mother God” so often, and we can see that one reason was to impress upon the mind of the student God's feminine nature as well as God's masculine nature. Humanity has generally considered God only as masculine, but in divine Science, Mrs. Eddy says, we have more authority for considering God feminine than for considering Him masculine, since Love, the feminine, imparts the clearest idea of Deity. (517:10) Therefore we can see that her frequent use of “Father-Mother” was also a concession to the spiritual benightedness of the age. As thought ascends the scale of being to diviner consciousness, God becomes to us the divine Principle, Love. (See Mis. 96:12.)

Francie: Those acquainted with the “system” in the pure Science of Christian Science, as we brought out previously, are aware that Father is defined in her Glossary as Mind [cause] and Mother is defined as Love Ifulfilment] and they are one—one Principle, Love. God, as Mind, conceives all, which God, as Love, simultaneously fulfils. We see this principle at work in even such a tiny thing as a seed; whether it be a rose or an oak tree, into that seed is already programmed the fulfilment. This fact of fulfilment coinciding with desire or cause (Mind) Mrs. Eddy symbolizes as “Father-Mother.” This is why we need never doubt the fulfilment of a right desire. The one Mind, God, is the only Mind. It is therefore our Mind, man's Mind; and what Mind conceives, Love fulfils. In Science we learn that in all God's kingdom there is no such thing as an unfulfilled desire.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

Tina: What then is evil? Why does evil seem so real?

Florence: In Divinity Course and General Collectanea the following statements on evil, by Mrs. Eddy, have been preserved:Animal magnetism evil, is powerless—but you must declare against it as though it had all power [p. 198]. If human belief handles A.M. there is a fight, but divine Love knows there is nothing to fight. God is all that will handle A.M. When error appears, it only appears to disappear ... Error in the individual is the result of a long line of mortal relationships with its prejudices, doubts, fears, etc. This is all there is to a mortal personality.... Selfishness is sin. Sensuality is disease and sickness. Sexuality is death. Selfishness is the father of the lie. Sensuality is the mother of the lie. Sexuality is the child of the lie. Selfishness is the predisposing cause. Sensuality is the remote cause. Sexuality is the exciting cause [Every sexual emotion is a conspiracy against Science.] ... OVERCOME selfishness and you bring out unity. OVERCOME sensuality and you bring out purity. OVERCOME sexuality and you bring out the God idea. These are the laws of sickness, sin, and death which war against spiritual laws of Life, Truth, and Love.

Science lays the axe at the root of the tree. You must go back to overcome the root cause. Selfishness is the cause of sensuality.

What is God? God is Life, Truth, Love. What is man? God's idea, perfect, made in His image and likeness. How many men are there? One, the perfect man. How many bodies are there? One. How many ideas can there be of this man and body? Just one. Does this idea admit of disease? No. Can that body have a diseased eye? No. Is that eye diseased? No. Then what is the matter? You believe it is diseased. Do you believe this? No. Why? Because you are God's perfect man, and believe only what is true about man.

Then what is this that talks belief and disease? Error. Can error make disease? Did it ever do anything? No. Can it ever do anything? No. Has it any power? No.

Why has it no power? Because God is all-power. Is there any other power than God? No. Then is error anything? Error is nothing because God created all things and is All-in-all.

With this silent argument you have silenced—entirely destroyed—the false type of man, and put man in his own true inheritance, and what was belief has become truth, and he is transformed by the renewing of his mind. And his body, which is not apart from him, but part of him, takes on its true likeness, and the Christ is made manifest in the flesh (Ibid, 210, 211).We must rise in the consciousness of God, infinite good, as the only Mind, the only reality, the only Ego, the Principle of all existence, the only Life, the only Truth, and the only Love; then evil, animal magnetism, will disappear. Why? Because there never was any evil or error. We only seem to encounter evil when we are not looking from God's standpoint. Evil is hypnotic suggestion only.

Handling of Evil in Textbook

Anna: I once did an in-depth study on how Mrs. Eddy handled evil in the textbook, and found that evil is handled differently according to which level of consciousness one is talking about. On the divine Science level, evil is precluded, since “in divine Science the material man is shut out from the presence of God. The five corporeal senses cannot take cognizance of Spirit” (543:8).

In absolute Christian Science, where all is light, latent error is handled. Truth destroys mortality and brings immortality to light. In arithmetic, in solving a problem, we know the principle alone holds the answer, so we divest ourselves of personal views regarding the calculation, and turn unrestrictedly to the principle. In absolute Christian Science we do the same. The doctrine of absolute Christian Science is that evil has neither intelligence nor power, and this is the great truth which strips all disguise from error. (454:11)

In Christian Science, concrete and visible error is handled. Here Truth handles error. Christian Science rises above the testimony of the physical sense (448:12); it teaches when and how to probe the self-inflicted wounds of selfishness, malice, envy, and hate. (462:25). “Christian Science relates especially to Science as applied to humanity” (127:15). Mrs. Eddy discovered divine Science, but, for humanity's sake, she reduced it to Christian Science. On the highest level, Science itself, evil, of course, is unknown.

To the uninitiated it might look like Mrs. Eddy is always saying more or less the same thing about the handling of evil throughout the textbook. But here, again, an in-depth study shows each chapter in the textbook takes up different phases of evil and handles them in the manner scientifically indicated by the subject matter. There is no repetition whatsoever. Her handling of evil in the textbook is a fascinating study.

Moderator: Would anyone like to add anything to what Anna has said regarding Mrs. Eddy's teaching on the subject of evil?

Grace: Mrs. Eddy consistently showed that the one evil is mortal mind operating through hypnotic suggestion, animal magnetism. Then she asked: Is animal magnetism anything? No! she said, it is just a lie about God, about what is really present. Mrs. Eddy unmasked this lie that evil is a reality, and so opened the way for humanity universally to make itself one with God, to “ratify a union predestined from all eternity” (Un. 17:8). Man ratifies his union with God through understanding his present perfection, as idea—the spiritual idea, or Christ—in which there is no matter, and consciousness is only aware of itself as the infinite concept of the infinite Mind—the Mind that is Love. This spiritual idea is the link in the chain of being that unites all mankind with Christ, its spiritual original.

Ages may pass, but this leaven of Truth is ever at work. (118:10) It is destroying the Adam-dream and obliterating the human sense of the divine that veils our present perfection. All that is ever going to be true in the “future” is true now just as all that will ever be true of mathematics is true now. Man's identity or consciousness reflects only Spirit, good. Christian Science will awaken man to the fact that he now lives in the flawless universe of Mind.

Tommy: This means the complete overcoming of the belief in matter. This we do by learning to start every thought from God, our true Mind and Priciple, knowing that we live, move, and have our being only in God. If we hold to God, the rest will take care of itself. When we are one with the divine Principle, God is the only “I.” As we rise spiritually we lose our sense of an “I” in matter.

Life, Truth, Love Unaffected by Lies

Margie: It is only animal magnetism—being fooled into believing that evil is real and has power—that keeps us from being the omnipresence of present perfection. If we fail to see the nowness of our God-being and divine perfection we are crucifying the ever-present Christ. Lida Fitzpatrick's Notes (p. 50), April 5,1907, recorded the following conversation with Mrs. Eddy:

'I am the way.' What is the way? Infinite Principle. What is infinite Principle? Truth, Life, Love. Can a lie affect Truth, Life, Love? No. Then hold your thought in Truth, Life, Love; while doing so, can you be touched? No. Then hold there. This will destroy all evil. This is the period in which it must be done. (See also DCC 28.)

Bill: Yes, this—today—is the period in which it must be done. Today, not tomorrow, we should accept the teaching of divine Science that matter is an error of statement. It is totally unreal and is rapidly being so seen on a world basis, and not only by Christian Scientists. Not one single seeming fact in all the whole fabric and buildup of mortal mind's universe is true or real. It is all merely aggressive mental suggestion coming to us for us to adopt as our own thought when it is only hypnotic suggestion. “Error,” Mrs. Eddy said, “comes to you for life, and you give it all the life it has. If you could but see the sublimity of your hope, the grandeur of your outlook, the infinite capacity of your being, you would just let error kill itself” (DCC 215). We must feel Love's presence now.

Moderator: Yes, Bill, that's right. Christian Science teaches that man is in the kingdom now; but because his material senses are inadequate to comprehend this fact, his spiritual sense must be resurrected. To receive the evidence that I am in the kingdom of heaven now, my spiritual sense must be resurrected. With spiritual sense I can discern the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses—the lying senses—are seeing. As spiritual sense is developed through assimilating the teaching of our textbook, matter concepts are obliterated and finally we lose all consciousness of the matter dream-world, just as we have lost consciousness of the flat earth which used to seem very real.

Rocky: The textbook is turning the world away from matter and personalities to the idea. When this complete turning from matter is accomplished, the matter concept will be obsolete, and we will see that all there is to personality is the fear of it or the love of it. We should not be engaged in patching up the body, trying to make a better eye, a better limb, etc., because then we are not putting on the new. We must start with God, and see that a perfect God must have a perfect reflection—man.

Tina: What should we be doing?

Kathleen: Lida Fitzpatrick, an early student, remembers Mrs. Eddy saying that in Science we say, “Eye, you cannot talk to me. I have put you off. This is putting off the old man.

Rookie: What does Mrs. Eddy mean by “putting off the old man”?

Anna: Mrs. Eddy's first sentence on page one of the textbook gives the answer. That sentence also gives us the clue for understanding the entire message of Science and Health. She states there that the prayer that reforms and heals is “a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.” This unselfed love means we are to recognize no selfhood of our own, we are to recognize God as the only Self, and the Self of all.

Only with an “unselfed” love can we realize that the divine Mind is our Mind. As Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” We have no mind of our own. Only with an “unselfed” love can we realize that we have no substance but the substance of Spirit, we have no identity but the identity that is God. “Unselfed” means without a human personal sense of self. “Putting off the old man” means getting myself out of the way, getting Anna out of the way, and letting the divine Ego work unobstructed by a human personal sense. That sense of a little personal ego of my own must yield to the only Ego, the divine Ego that is the Ego of each one of us. No one has a self of his own. The belief that he has a selfhood of his own is “the old man” that must be put off.

To put off “the old man” we must start every thought from God. Ask: How does Mind see this? How does Spirit see this? etc., and watch to see that no human mortal conceptions enter. Everything that is not of the divine nature must be silenced. Our only need is to discover our divinity; in that divinity, every need is met.

We discovered our divinity and put off “the old man” through the true prayer of “a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.” (1:3) The true “I” or Ego is “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.”

Kathleen: The Lida Fitzpatrick quote continues: “Rise to the spiritual sense, then your body will respond; then take no thought what you eat, your clothes, etc., for your heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things. Why? because if we see we have no selfhood of our own, no selfhood apart from God, then God, Mind, the one Self—the Self of all—knows our need and answers it before we call (see Isa. 65:24). This is the resurrection. The resurrection is not to be resurrected from matter-dust. There never was any life in matter to be resurrected.] The resurrection is seeing the real man that was never in matter. He never was sick to be made well. That is the way I did the healing. I never saw the material man before me, but saw the real man, perfect; and this healed instantaneously, and no relapse” (Lida Fitzpatrick Notes, p. 49 or DCC. 27). Mrs. Eddy beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to her where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. (476:32)

Seeing the Patient as Well

Moderator: In We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Second Series) Frank Walter Gale reports that in the class he attended, Mrs. Eddy stressed that in order to heal quickly we must not recognize any disease in a patient, even as a belief, because when we do we make more or less a reality of it. We should go to the patient with the feeling that he is well and we want to show him that he is well. Mrs. Eddy told us, says Mr. Gale, that her instantaneous healings resulted when she lost sight of the personality and realized only the presence of the spiritual and perfect. When her thought was lost in the eminence of Mind the healing took place, she said.

The healing will grow more easy and more immediate, she told the class, as you realize that God, good, is all, and good is Love. “You must gain Love, and lose the false sense called love. You must feel the Love that never faileth—that perfect sense of divine power that makes healing no longer power but grace. Then you will have the Love that casts out fear, and when fear is gone doubt is gone and your work is done. Why? Because it was never undone.”

Mrs. Eddy was showing them that if they had the right inward attitude, if their consciousness conformed to divine Principle, the healing would result. She was showing that a right attitude—a consciousness filled with love that reflected divine Love—demonstrates itself. When our consciousness is filled with Life, Truth, and Love, the healing is natural and spontaneous because Life, Truth, and Love demonstrate themselves. All we need to do is get self out of the way, and when self is put behind us, Love is out in front, and it does the healing—sees there is nothing to heal. Our whole work is to be one with the divine Principle. When the musician studies music he studies to become one with the principle of music. The mathematician studies to become one with the principle of mathematics. The Scientist studies to become one with his divine Principle, and when one understands the divine Principle and is one with that Principle, one has the right attitude, the right consciousness, and healing is natural, just as an understanding of math makes the solving of mathematical problems easy and natural.

Unselfed Love the Great Need

Francie: At this point, Mrs. Eddy says that “the neighbor is one with the Father. So are we. We are all one in Spirit. The 'I' is one, infinite. The one who sees this and abides in it becomes unselfed and is then ready to see his neighbor as God, Principle, Love, sees him, and is a Christian Scientist. There is but one way through, and only one way through; and that is to unself” (Lida Fitzpatrick Notes, DCC 22).

It was Mrs. Eddy's unselfed love that made a success of the Cause for the world. She demonstrated every step. She took the side with God and put all of the balance there. When we put all the balance on God's side it brings us to the baptism of Spirit, the third appearing, where mortality is finally swallowed up in immortality, where the curtain is dropped on material man, and the human consciousness is immersed in the infinite ocean of Love. Then man's identity or consciousness reflects only Spirit, good. All sense of matter and a material universe has been erased, expunged from the record.

Rocky: Jesus showed that dying didn't kill us, and Mrs. Eddy showed that being born doesn't cause us to live.

The Third Baptism

Johnny: Accepting the teachings of Divine Science (the Comforter) causes us to live. God, Mind, is All, and the infinite and eternal Mind is the only Mind, and it is our Mind. It is the only “I or Us” (591:16). The truth in the Scientific Statement of Being (468:8) is man, for man is the understanding of God. Man is God's consciousness of Himself. God, Mind, Principle, conscious of Himself, is man. Edward E. Norwood wrote: “Knowing God is being man. We find God only as we find our real selfhood, and Mary Baker Eddy showed us how to do it. She came that we might have Life, Truth, and Love, and joy and purity, and humility, and honesty and substance and peace, and have them more abundantly.

“The Christ, the spiritual idea, comes to the moral, to that which believes in matter and is held by it, and cuts it off from the physical. The moral, thus freed, unfolds to the spiritual and is saved” (Miscellaneous Documents, P. 133).

The moral is the “Abel” thought that Cain could slay because Abel didn't realize that all is spiritual. The moral is that transitional stage involving such qualities as “humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance” (115:26). Unless these qualities are combined with “wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, love, health, holiness,” all of which are spiritual (116:2), they can be crushed by the physical, the “Cain” qualities. (See 541:14. Also Genesis 4:8) Conformity with the moral, however, cannot be evaded, avoided, escaped, shunned, or eschewed.

Juliann: We should be totally engaged in dissolving the ghosts of matter and materiality by putting all our weight into the scale with God, until matter and materiality is obliterated from the scene. Then perfection appears and reality is reached. Mrs. Eddy calls this the third baptism, or third appearing, which means the disappearing of all but the harmonious omni-action of Principle and its idea as one. This would be the third advent.

Moderator: I am sure we all agree, Juliann, that laying off the mortal, the big lie about ourselves and God, is all that is needed to see ourselves as God sees us and as we already are and always have been. The Science Mrs. Eddy brought enables us to do this. But during the sensual ages, Mrs. Eddy says, absolute Christian Science may not be achieved prior to the change called death (254:16). She doesn't say it cannot be achieved. She herself lived in the atmosphere of divine Science much of the time, or she could not have accomplished the stupendous task of completing the work of Christ Jesus on earth. Mr. Carpenter, Sr. once remarked, “We go up occasionally; she came down occasionally.”

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Christ which, Mrs. Eddy says, baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. (333:23) Paul speaks of being “caught up to the third heaven [what Mrs. Eddy would call the third baptism, third advent, or third appearing, which is just the disappearing of all but God and his reflection], paradise, and heard unspeakable words . . . “ Too bad he considered them “unlawful to utter” (II Cor. 12:2-4). No doubt he saw the absolute oneness of God and man.

Would anyone like to add anything to what has been said on this subject of the third baptism?

Jackie: Wasn't St. John on our plane of existence when he experienced this “third baptism”?

Bill: Yes, Mrs. Eddy says that this heavenly city [consciousness] lighted by the Sun of Righteousness, this infinite All, reached St. John's vision while he was still on our plane of existence. (576:3) To mortals the new heaven and new earth, this heavenly consciousness, seems “hidden in the mist of remoteness,” but St. John was able to behold what the eye cannot see—that which is invisible to uninspired thought (572:23). Through learning the system of Christian Science we can exchange mortal consciousness for divine consciousness.

Grace: She indicates that St. John was looking at the same thing everyone else was looking at, but he had cultured his spiritual sense to the point where he arrived at “that consciousness which God bestows.” Thus heaven and earth to him were spiritual, while to another who has not yet cultured his consciousness to that degree, the same heaven and earth are material. Mrs. Eddy states “what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness” (573:9), but the only thing that is ever really present is the omni-action of divine Principle, Love. (573) Mathematics, for example, is always perfect, regardless of the state or stage the learner finds himself in.

Diane: What helps us attain that divine consciousness?

Florence: I think it would help us most if we took what is in Science and Health as though we were receiving it from God directly. When you “take the 'little book' “ know that you are hearing the voice of your divine Principle; read it as though it were a love-letter; read it over and over; read between the lines; pour over it; secretly ponder it; glory in it. Carry it around with you and at every opportunity stop to savor its precious promises.”

Anna: Illustrating another way to develop “that consciousness which God bestows,” Mrs. Eddy relates that a father plunged his infant babe, only hours old, into the water for several minutes, and repeated this operation daily, until the child could remain under water twenty minutes, moving and playing without harm. (556:31) If we daily increased the time we are immersed in the eminence of Mind, this would bring the conviction that God is the only Life, and that man's eternal Principle is ever-present Life. Thus “we shall be found Love, Life, and Truth, because we understand them” (first ed. 77:17, S. & H.).

Bessie: How do we start?

Francie: We have to use what we already know. We are encouraged as we overcome error with our new-found knowledge, but we are never satisfied until we see ourselve as “incorporeal, divine, supreme infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love” that the textbook is leading us into. Every spiritualized thought pushes us nearer to being what we have always been and are now, in spite of what the lying testimony of the senses is telling us.

It is error to believe we have to become something that we now are not; because in reality we already are perfect and we must claim present perfection. Remember, an image can't think. Always ask: “God, what are you saying?” God says: You don't have to become something you already are, and have always been.

Sally: We need to unmask the Adam-dream—the animal magnetism, aggressive mental suggestion, hypnotic suggestion. What needs to be uncovered is that “dam” or obstruction, that ignorance, which seems to separate us from oneness with God, good, and our everpresent perfection. This “dam” Mrs. Eddy named “false belief,” and it is only false belief that hides the “third baptism” from us.

Tommy: If we think of the third baptism or “third appearing” as something which is going to happen in the future, we are crucifying the ever-present Christ. We must drop the mortal sense of things now. At no point can the mortal belief of existence unite with the true. The mortal must be dropped. We can only unlock Science and Health by living it in our own life, by starting every thought from God, and becoming one with the seven synonymous terms for God.

Margie: Although it is recorded (DCC. 234) that Mrs. Eddy stated: “This is the second coming of Christ and it will be the last,” she also said, though ages pass, “this leaven of Truth is ever at work. It must destroy the entire mass of error and so be eternally glorified in man's spiritual freedom” (118:10). Gradually the whole world will learn the system and Science Mrs. Eddy set forth in the textbook enabling man to exchange mortal consciousness for immortal scientific divine consciousness, wherein we experience the “third baptism.”

SESSION IV: MRS EDDY AS DEMONSTRATOR .

AUSTRALIA, LONDON, AND OTHER HEALINGS

Moderator: We know that Mrs. Eddy worked continuously under God's direction and demonstrated every step she took. Not only did she demonstrate every step in the many and varied steps necessary in founding her revelation in human consciousness but she also felt it necessary whenever possible to demonstrate every statement she wrote in Science and Health.

For instance when she wanted to write in the textbook, “The 'still small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound” (559:8), she felt she must demonstrate this statement before putting it in the textbook.

The following testimony was given some years ago at the Christian Science Sanitarium in San Francisco, and was related to me by Dorothy Napkie of Newport Beach, California:

The wife of a businessman in one of our southern states was pronounced in the terminal stages of tuberculosis. The attending physician named a place in Australia where the climate might be of benefit in prolonging the patient's life. The husband immediately made all arrangements and they took up their abode at a certain hotel in Australia. Each day the husband would carry his wife to a veranda where she could sit in the sun. One day as he carried her he felt she had grown so emaciated and weak, he wondered sadly if this might not be the last day he would carry his dearly beloved to the veranda, and after seating her, he hurried away to hide his grief.

That day, as the wife sat there, lost in thought contemplating the beauty all around her, she suddenly felt that she was being healed, that this sickness was not unto death, and she rose from her chair when her husband later returned, exclaiming, “I am healed!” She immediately began asking God to show her what had healed her. After returning to San Francisco, she heard of Christian Science and the healing work it was accomplishing. She began attending the Wednesday Evening testimonial meetings, having become convinced that it was Christian Science that had somehow reached her thought and healed her.

At one of these Wednesday Evening meetings she met a man who was on Mrs. Eddy's household staff, and was visiting in San Francisco. He was leaving soon to return to Pleasant View where Mrs. Eddy was then living. The wife asked him if he would take a letter, expressing her gratitude, to Mrs. Eddy.

When the man arrived at Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy herself answered the door, greeting him with: “You have a letter for me!” “Yes, Mother,” he answered. “But how did you know that?”

Mrs. Eddy said, “I have waited two years for that letter.”

After receiving it, she inserted lines 8-10 on page 559 of Science and Health. She had demonstrated it—the letter was her answer to the treatment she had given two years earlier.

On another occasion when Christian Science was rapidly spreading in England Mrs. Eddy felt the need for another representative there. After praying about it, she talked with a certain student about making his home in England to help with the Christian Science healing work in progress there.

The student readily agreed, but after leaving Mrs. Eddy he had second thoughts. He had a wife, small children, and a large house fully furnished, among other things, that would make it difficult for him to leave. He was so disturbed that he decided to go right back to Mrs. Eddy and tell her he couldn't accept after all.

Mrs. Eddy listened patiently to all the reasons he gave for changing his mind and deciding he couldn't go.

Then she said, “But you have forgotten one thing.”

He responded, “What is that?”

She said, “You have forgotten that God wants you in England.”

Up to this point the student may have thought it was just Mrs. Eddy that wanted him in England, but when both God and Mrs. Eddy wanted him there, how could he refuse?

He left, knowing it was up to God. A feeling of confidence warmed and cheered him, replacing the disturbance and misgivings he had previously entertained.

A few days later a man stopped at his home and inquired if he knew of any houses for sale in the neighborhood. The man said, “This house is for sale, furnished.” They quickly made a deal satisfactory to both parties, and in a very short time the student with his family set sail for a fine, long career in England.

To Mrs. Eddy there was only the omnipresence of present perfection, always operating fully.

Rookie: When Mrs. Eddy in 1891 wrote in Science and Health, page 162:20: “shortened limbs have been elongated,” she may have had in mind the healing published in the Christian Science Sentinel, Vol. VIII, p. 216, and the Christian Science Journal, Vol. XXIII, p. 572. About 1888, when Mrs. Eddy lived at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, a man named Carter came there to do some work, One of his legs had been injured in a fall from a building. As a result he wore an iron shoe eight or nine inches high. He related his healing as follows:I was called to Mrs. Eddy's home on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston to do some light work. Mrs. Eddy came into the room where I was busy, and observing my condition, kindly remarked, “I suppose you expect to get out of this some time.” I answered, “No; all that can be done for me has been done, and I can now manage to get around with a cane,” Mrs. Eddy said, “Sit down and I will treat you.” When she finished the treatment she said, “You go home and take off that iron shoe, and give your leg a chance to straighten out.” I went home and did as I was told, and now I am so well that so far as I know, one leg is as good as the other.A similar healing by Mrs. Eddy was related in a letter to her from a crippled man's niece, and published in the Sentinel, Vol. X, p. 912:

About 1870 Mrs. Eddy was visiting with a friend in a Boston suburb. A cripple came to the friend's door. His arms were so stiff and his legs so contracted that he was strapped to crutches. Mrs. Eddy saw him and gave him something. Hobbling to the next house he was given permission to enter and lie down. In about an hour he found his arms and legs loosed; he could stand erect, he could walk. He was well. He attributed his recovery to Mrs. Eddy, for whom he inquired without knowing her name. When later Mrs. Eddy's students asked her how she had healed him, she replied, “When I looked on that man my heart gushed with unspeakable pity and prayer.” Mrs. Eddy loved. She yearned to do good. Mrs. Eddy knew that God is Love and His law is always available and adequate for every need. “The consciousness of God as Love gives man power with untold furtherance” ('02.8:30). Mrs. Eddy's comprehension of God's love was clear and positive.

Moderator: The name Hanover P. Smith has long been familiar to me as an important and active worker in the early Christian Science movement. I had read his Writings and Genius of the Founder of Christian Science, a pamphlet greatly appreciated by Mrs. Eddy because it helped make her known to the public when the pamphlet was issued in 1886. But only recently did I read that Hanover P. Smith had been deaf and dumb from birth. He had tried medical means for relief and had been in an institution for the deaf and dumb. When he was nineteen his mother heard of Christian Science and took Hanover to see Mrs. Eddy who healed him quickly.

In the early days, healings of this nature were everyday affairs.

Mrs. Eddy's God was her Life. She wanted us to understand that our God is our Life. Mrs. Eddy's self-effacement was complete. She was like a transparency for God to shine through. She knew “man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as his Mind, and this reflection is substance—the substance of good.” (Ret. 57:15)

Mrs. Eddy's constant prayer was:

Oh, Lord, give me higher, purer, hollier desires.

Oh, Lord, give me more self-abnegating desires. Oh, Lord, give me a desire for more Love.

She realized that without the unction of Love there is no vision.

Unassable evidence of Mrs. Eddy's position as the revelator of Christ, Truth, to our age is found, as before mentioned, in the healing work of Christian Science. It is also attested to by the fact that she conquered all opposition. She was often opposed by those calling themselves ministers of the gospel, as well as other Christians who attacked her with a malignity and fury that would have graced the age of Mary and Elizabeth when Catholics and Protestants put each other to death for the sake of him who commanded mankind to love one another.

Tommy: Mrs. Eddy was motivated by a single thought: the establishment of a scientific Christianity adapted to the needs of mankind. The variations of that singleness of purpose brought forth steps in their order, and the future will prove the successful outcome of that for which she hoped: namely, the total freedom from bondage to sin, sickness, and death which can only come about through the banishment of the last enemy, human birth.

Sally: What do you think Mrs. Eddy knew that enabled her to heal these cases?

Moderator Let's analyze each case separately. Anna, what do you think Mrs. Eddy was knowing or calculating when she saw that “the 'still small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean, etc.”?

Anna: I think she was knowing that mortal consciousness is not personal. She was knowing that there was no sinner anywhere in all God's universe. If there was no sinner then there could be no claim of a sick individual. She saw that, as in arithmetic, anyone can falsely calculate that 2 + 2 are 5, but this in no way affects the principle of arithmetic that remains perfect. It is the same with man. Man remains perfect as God's image and likeness, regardless of any and all false beliefs about himself that he might accept. “Sin existed as a false claim,” Mrs. Eddy says, “before the human concept of sin was formed.” Mrs. Eddy looked out and “beheld in Science the perfect man” everywhere. The false claims mankind was accepting and believing to be a part of its real being were pure illusion. Those false claims were never part of the real man.

Before Jesus brought Lazarus forth from the tomb he was using this Principle that Mrs. Eddy nineteen centuries later discovered and made available to humanity.

When Mrs. Eddy was doing her spiritual calculations she also knew that the truth she was knowing would rest on some receptive thought and fulfill her specific need for proof so she could confidently write in Science and Health “the 'still small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean, etc.”

Moderator: Thank you, Anna. What about her need to have another representative in England?

Johnny: I think there, again, Mrs. Eddy saw the law of supply and demand. She saw it was just a false claim, impersonal evil, trying to suggest that there was a need and no supply. She put that false claim into the same category that a mathematician would put 2 x 6 is 13. She instantly replaced the false suggestion with the truth as God knows the truth. Since her thought always started with the divine Mind and with what the divine Mind knows, her thought naturally moved in “God's grooves of Science.”

Moderator: Very good, Johnny. When Mrs. Eddy said to the workman with the eight or nine inch iron shoe, “Sit down and I will treat you,” how do you think she was reasoning on that occasion?

Grace: That man was believing he had been in an accident. Mrs. Eddy knew that the belief in accidents is just one of mortal mind's age-old mythological conceptions, another case of sin constituting the human or physical concept. That there had ever been an accident in God's universe, which is peopled with nothing but spiritual ideas, was just preposterous! It never happened. This dear man had just accepted a suggestion put out by mythology which was the suppositional opposite of what divine Mind knows to be the correct image. Mrs. Eddy beheld the perfect man, the man Mind has as its image and likeness. That healed the error just as the mathematician heals 2 x 6 = 13 by seeing it is a lie about 2 x 6 = 12.

Moderator: Yes, Grace, Mrs. Eddy rose above corporeality and looked with God's eyes.

What about the cripple who came to a friend's door, and was healed by Mrs. Eddy?

Tommy: In that case, you remember, Mrs. Eddy said, “When I looked on that man my heart gushed with unspeakable pity and prayer.” Desire is prayer. Mrs. Eddy's heart went to God in fervent prayer to be enabled to behold the man of God's creating. Her heart revolted against the suggestion that sin could pin itself to God's perfect image and likeness. She knew that what was binding the limbs of this innocent man was nothing but the same old “sin that constitutes the human or physical concept.” He was suffering, needlessly, because he had allowed some mythological beliefs to bind him—he failed to challenge mythological concepts with the truth that man is always naturally, inherently perfect since he is an image in the divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy's ability to make a quick spiritual computation set the man free; she saw that Mind made all its creations, free and perfect.

Sin, sickness, discord, has no power to pin itself on us if we challenge it and see it as merely a false claim. We must look at sin and sickness in the same way we look at 2 x 2 = 5, or at the assertion that the world is flat.

Moderator: Yes, Tommy, that healing shows how necessary divine Love is in the healing process. Mrs. Eddy washed out the error with flood tides of Love.

What about Hanover P. Smith?

Margie: He had allowed himself to be chained to the belief that he was born deaf and dumb. Mrs. Eddy would not accept the belief that there was deafness and dumbness in the Mind of God which was changeless good. Since there was no deafness and dumbness in God's Mind there could be none in His image and likeness. Sin, sickness, deafness, dumbness, blindness, discords of any nature, are not in the perfect Mind, God. The universal law is that the greater must control the lesser. Then perfection must rule over imperfection.

Mrs. Eddy knew that body and mind are one in action. Body was the visible manifestation of an invisible power. The “I” and body are one. In order to change the body the “I” must change. When Mrs. Eddy's “I” looked at Hanover P. Smith she saw God's image and likeness. If she had looked with the same “I” that Hanover was looking at himself with, she could not have healed him. Mrs. Eddy beheld in Science the perfect man. She laid down the mortal point of view and looked through God's eyes alone. And “greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his false viewpoint of his brother man and see him as God sees him,” to paraphrase Jesus.

Our brother man is always perfect regardless of the myths that seemingly have attached themselves to him, or the false suggestions to which he has yielded his mentality.

Moderator: That's correct, Margie. All day long we are bombarded with false suggestions. Mrs. Eddy, on Martha Wilcox's first day at Chestnut Hill, warned Martha that the real danger was never anything from outside her thought. Mrs. Eddy told her that “sometimes a sense of personality arises before your thought [like Hanover P. Smith, the cripple on crutches or the workman with the iron shoe, etc.] and leads you to believe that a personality is something outside and separate from your thought [that needs to be healed or] that can harm you.” Mrs. Eddy showed her that the real danger was never this threatened attack from outside her thought where the personality seemed to be, but that the real danger was always her own thought.

Mrs. Wilcox states: “She made it clear that my sense of personality was mental—a mental image, formed in my so-called mortal mind, and was never external or separate from my mind. This supposititious mortal mind outlines itself as a belief of a material personality, with form and conditions and laws and circumstances—in fact, with all of the phenomena embraced in what is called material life and personality. Then she showed me that not one solitary fact in this whole fabric of suppositious evil was true. [Mrs. Eddy's ability to heal sin and sickness and raise the dead resulted from her total conviction that error, including all sense of personality, was a lie. She saw error as merely mental illusion coming up from the deep hidden subconscious realm of mythology, the realm of illusion—of hypnotic suggestion.

“She showed me that I must detect that all this mental phenomena was only aggressive mental suggestion coming to me for me to adopt it as my own thought.

“She showed me that, because mental practise is mental, the only place that I could meet [error] was within what seemed to be my own mentality, and the only way I could meet the error was to give up the belief in a power and presence other than God, or Truth. She showed me that this seeming within enemy could never harm me if I were awake to the Truth and active in the Truth.” (Notes given to the author by Mrs. Wilcox's student, Fannie Abbot Andrews).

True treatment involves knowing the divine ever-presence of infinite perfection.

Anna: In all these healings no one lost his or her substance or identity on account of the fact that Mrs. Eddy saw them as an image in the divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy's correct Mind-calculations gave substance (Spirit), and identity (Soul), to the divine Mind-image. She saw these “patients” from a higher state of consciousness. And because Mrs. Eddy had a higher state or structure of consciousness, the phenomena was a higher phenomena, a well (whole) man or situation instead of a sick or crippled individual, or a situation that lacked in some respects, as in the case of the need for a representative in London.

When we change our structure of consciousness or our scale of observation, what we are looking at changes too.

In Science of Man, her earliest published teaching, Mrs. Eddy asked: “When teaching this truth, is the learner first to understand he is a principle and not a person, and secondly that life, the principle outside the body, is himself?

Her answer is: “Certainly, and this will commence to take him into intelligence and away from the error of his belief that life is in matter and is that error which holds him from the understanding of this principle of Science, and that error which holds man from understanding God in truth, and which has hitherto explained him as a belief, a person, and error.”

Mrs. Eddy saw that “the one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality” (281:14). She taught that we are all, each one of us, this infinite individuality, we are all the one identity, the one Ego, infinitely individualized, of course, but always remaining the one Ego. There is nothing else. It was this infinite individualization that enabled Mrs. Eddy to meet the need of each of the cases of healing that we have cited.

Recess

The Way: Love For One's Fellowman

Moderator: Looking into Mrs. Eddy's place in scriptural prophecy, we can see that she fulfilled the symbol of the angel standing in the sun (Rev. 19:17). Her teachings are light itself in which there is no darkness. As Jesus manifested the fatherhood of God, so Mrs. Eddy in her writings manifested the motherhood of God, manifested God's nature as Love.

We have seen she repeatedly emphasized that Christian Science is not Science unless it be Christian to the highest degree, unless it illustrates and demonstrates the Christianity of the Christ beyond all religions. In the language of Scripture this Science, said Mrs. Eddy, “is God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen as angels, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” It is God disciplining and destroying evil, physically, morally, spiritually. Salvation by proclamation was a forlorn and misleading hope. Evil, she taught, had to be recognized as evil, and it must be seen as having no legitimacy, no ultimate reality, Then, on that basis, it had to be repudiated. The only error was mortality itself since “existence separate from divinity, Science explains as impossible” (522:10). This can only mean that we must find all happiness in divine Love, Life in and of Spirit—spiritual life here and now. But this cannot be done without first speaking the truth to every form of error and rejecting it. To accept human life as defined by the physical senses was itself the primal slavery. The real enemy was the concept of life as finite and self-devouring.

Bill: The most dangerous error for students is not seeing error, not being aware of it, not being sensible to its presence. It must be detected but always seen as unreal, and then, with what we know to be true about God and man, it must be destroyed. This result will only come about through spiritual realization. Mrs. Eddy never let her followers forget that the purpose of Christian Science was Christian healing and regeneration. That was “the way.” The way is love for one's fellowman, a love that heals; all is won through it. Christian Science is the light of Love. “The error of the ages is preaching without practise” (241:17).

With regard to our brother man, she taught that the most loving thing we can do is to see him as God, Principle, Love, sees him. We must unsee the picture of a corporeal mortal, and see man as that which reflects every quality and attribute of God. This must be a steadily maintained attitude—an impersonalizing of our fellowman, and a supplanting of the mortal viewpoint with the immortal viewpoint.

The passing years showed Mrs. Eddy's ever-deepening conviction that the letter of Christian Science could be understood only through the spirit of Christ. Her letters, counsel, admonition and Journal articles also showed an ever-increasing commitment to the Christian ethic of love. Is the enemy you should love something outside your own creation? Isn't your enemy something you first formulate? Then you look upon the object of your own conception. (Mis. 8:9) “Animal magnetism, hypnotism, etc.,” she declares (My. 364:9) “are disarmed by the practitioner who excludes from his own consciousness, and that of his patients, all sense of the realism of any other cause or effect save that which cometh from God.” For her students, Mrs. Eddy opened a door in heaven and let them look at the very heart of existence, the heart of divinity, where they discerned a divine Love that was the true Principle of their being. As Mrs. Eddy explained their real being, the students glimpsed a flawless universe—a universe that knew no pain, no finity, no materiality, no sickness, sin, or death.

But how was this universe of flawless being to be obtained and retained so that it permanently supplanted all sense of a material universe?

Margie: Mrs. Eddy says that the human self must be evangelized. There is no other way. Here she is using “Must” just as we might say two times two must be four. This is the “stone” that the builders (meaning all mortals) tend to reject. But in the end, mortal mind or error, will have to give itself up and yield to the total evangelization of the human self.

Rocky: How do we go about this “evangelizing” of the human self—how do we become selfless?

Margie: The entire textbook shows us how this is done. Mrs. Eddy did not declare that it must be done and then leave students of the textbook without a guide. There is also much on this subject in her Prose Works, in the Manual, and in Christ and Christmas that helps in this evangelizing process.

Florence: On page 115 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy lists what she calls “First Degree: Depravity” traits and tendencies in mortals. These she saw as “sirens and rocks in our course, on and by which so many wrecks are made” (Mis. 280:29). Honesty compelled her to rebuke the carnal mind wherever it surfaced. “The danger to the student is popularity and power, self-seeking instead of self abasement. I have washed their feet and continue to do thus, and they must wash one another's feet instead of elbowing each other; or they can never follow the example of our Exemplar” (Lyman Powell, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 243).

Mrs. Eddy taught them by fervor in speaking the Word, by tenderness in searching into their needs, and especially by herself feeling the spirit of Christian Science, as she uttered the spirit of it together with the letter. “When she spoke of Christ Jesus it seemed as if time and space, the barrier of two millenniums and two hemispheres, were swept away” (Emma Easton Newman, The Primary Class of 1889 and Other Memories).

“Her commendation produced the effect of causing one to see one's shortcomings and at the same time determining to overcome them” (ibid). She made the two great Commandments practical. She showed them that to love the Lord (the Word, the Bride) thy God, with all thy heart, and to love thy neighbor as thyself (which is being Lamb-like—being the Lamb of God) was practicing the divine Principle, Love, and was the Principle itself in operation. Mrs. Eddy showed that obeying the two great Commandments (Matt. 22:37-40) was practicing “the Word and the wedding of this Word to all human thought and action” (My. 153:28).

In the class of 1898 Mrs. Eddy urged the students to be Love itself. Human love and compassion, the second-degree qualities, weren't high enough, she said. We can't stay with just human love (although it is an indispensable step towards divine Love), we must go on to be Love itself. Only then are we safe. Divine Love alone is Life. Our world must become the world Mary Baker Eddy beheld in Science—our world must be seen as Christian Science.

Sally: What would you say the law of Love was?

Anna: It is Love never losing sight of loveliness (248:3); it is Love wedded to its own spiritual idea (575:3); it is that which tells us there is only one reality, and which knows no existence separate from divinity. The law of Love is symbolized by the wedding of the Lamb of Love (who has laid down all materiality) to his Bride, Science. This is true marriage, the opposite of the human sense of marriage that is “synonymous with legalized lust” (My. 5:4). The law of love is “the Word and the wedding of this Word to all human thought and action.”

When we find we have no existence separate from divinity, then the love we express is not man's love, but is the Love that is Principle. Love is all encompassing; this is why Mrs. Eddy could say that man is as big as God; this is also why manhood and womanhood are one. They are one because there is only one God, Principle, and one infinite God, Principle, can have only one infinite reflection.

What Manner of Men?

Francie: We spoke about Mrs. Eddy insisting upon making Science practical by practicing the Principle of brotherly love. One of the countless instances when Jesus practised Love is recounted by Luke (9:51-56): At eventide Jesus and his weary disciples were traveling toward Jerusalem. Hot, dusty, hungry, they all looked forward to rest and food, so Jesus sent messengers ahead to make hotel reservations in the Samaritan town they were approaching. But the Samaritans, disliking the Jerusalemites, and seeing that “his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem,” refused them.

This didn't sit too well with James and John, and feeling punishment was indicated, they asked Jesus: “Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?”

But Jesus turned and rebuked them, saying, “Ye know not what manner of men ye are!” [You are Principle's men (ideas); you are Love itself, in expression. We aren't here to destroy lives but to save them.] And they simply went to another village. It wasn't worth having a fuss about. Jesus habitually “crossed over to the other side,” to God's side, and looked out from God's point of view. He loved the Samaritans and wasn't about to pick a quarrel with them, or take sides in a quarrel they were having with the Jerusalemites. We should never pick up other people's quarrels. If two of your good friends are having a quarrel, best stay out of it, and do what you can to bring about harmony.

Sally: Mrs. Eddy says Christian Science, being the soul of divine philosophy, reproduces the philosophy of Paul and Jesus, and that Christian Science refutes everything that is not a postulate of the divine Principle, God. The philosophy of Science and Health alone will bear the strain of time. (See Mis. 364.)

HUMAN PHILOSOPHY

Moderator: Yes, Sally, what was sent forth in the little book was indeed “severe and glorious” in its proof, as it clashed head on with the flood of scientific materialism that was engulfing past religious suppositions. Orthodoxy had not been afraid of the challenges to the reality of matter put forth by Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Spinoza, or Bishop Berkeley, all of whom, Mrs. Eddy said, were once clothed with brief authority. Orthodoxy did not fear the circumlocution and cold categories of Kant which failed to improve the conditions of mortals, morally, spiritually, or physically. (No. 22:4) “But the trenchant truth that cuts its way through iron and sod” (My. 160:14), a proposition with radical practical consequences, was a different matter. It called for active defiance on the part of the establishment which was rapidly plunging into total materialism. Mrs. Eddy saw that the real villain was the human mind's resistance to the impersonal demands of Truth.

Tommy: Materialistic so-called “reformers” have decried the slave-morality that “pours a sickly Christian sympathy on weakness and mediocrity,” but their proposed cures amounted to nothing more than a rearrangement of this slavery. Mrs. Eddy held that it was our belief in the testimony of the physical senses that insured the continuance of this primal slavery until Christian Science educated us out of false beliefs.

The following article by Mrs. Eddy is preserved in the December, 1885 Christian Science Journal:

Woman's Industrial Union [signed “PROF. M.B.G. EDDY']:

When reading the annual address of the President before the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of this city, I [Mary Baker Eddy] said, if this platform is rendered practical, it is the thing for the period, and the woman and the hour have met. We know little of the inside or outside of this organization, its motives, methods or aims, but Mrs. Diaz has presented a fitting model whence to enlighten, uplift and adorn society.

From her address we quote the following: “Will there never be an uprising of slaves, a declaration of independence? Never while woman thinks her part is chiefly to please. Never, until she stands on equal ground with man; equally free to decide questions of duty, equally bound to develop all the powers of her being.

“Fraud, drunkenness, sensuality, vice, crime, are simply character manifest in life, the seen coming forth from the unseen, coming from unconsidered forces.”

The above made practical, which it can and should be, Massachusetts will have the best system of social reform which takes in the secret of home life, of all her sister states. She has already the best therapeutics and pathology, namely, our system of metaphysical healing—Christian Science.

Advice From Mrs. Eddy

Kathleen: In one of Mrs. Eddy's 1889 classes a student said she had tried in vain to bring back someone who had strayed and was no longer loyal to the teachings of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy advised:

“Do not try any more. The love that is going out to the world through Christian Science is the greatest power there is, and the only thing that will change that thought.” She added: “ I have often felt these hard unloving thoughts of others come about me like dark clouds, and seem to surround me, but they never touched me, and why? Because my thoughts were going out to them all the time in love and with a desire to help them” (From the reminiscences of Alice Dayton).

Of another student, weighed down with the imponderable burden of fear, Mrs. Eddy asked: What would you do if you knew someone was trying to kill you through mental argument? “With me,” recalls the student, “this question created a great sense of fear, and I believe it was the same with other members of the class.” After waiting a few moments for an answer Mrs. Eddy said, 'Cast it in the waste basket.' This light remark concerning the error, and her realization of the powerlessness and nothingnesss of the highest form of error, destroyed my sense of fear and left me with a great sense of peace and fearlessness of the claim of error to harm” (Sarah A. Farlow).

Ancient and Modern Philosophies No Help

Moderator: Could any ancient or modern philosophies be of help to Mrs. Eddy in fulfilling her role as Revelator, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science?

Anna: No. Ancient and modern philosophies never realized that Spirit, God (the only creator your true mind), cannot create a material universe. They have always assumed that the phenomenon of Spirit, God, the All-in-all, was the antipode of Spirit. In other words, they have always assumed that Spirit, God, created his opposite, matter. They assumed that a God who was infinite Love created evil.

As philosophy, metaphysics was a subject that interested such great minds as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and many others, but always as an ivory tower intellectualism. Both ancient and modern philosophy misstate mental Science, its Principle and practise. They see nothing but a law of matter. They all leave the grand point untouched—they don't crown the power of Mind as the liberator or the eradicator of physical enemies: the belief in matter, evil, disease and death. They don't see that matter is nothing but an image in mortal mind. (116:13) This was not the case when Mary Baker Eddy responded to Jesus' prophecy regarding the Comforter: “The Comforter ... shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). She fulfilled that prophecy and brought the Comforter, Divine Science—the “spirit of Truth” that will abide with us forever. Her metaphysics wasn't just academic but a way of mastering experience; it marked the first appearance on earth of practical metaphysics.

In the middle of the nineteenth century science and theology were locked in a furious battle on the question of origin. Darwin's Origen of Species caused churchmen to rise in angry defense of their literal interpretation of the two accounts of creation.

In his Descent of Man, Darwin postulated the origin of man in the blind stirring of primeval slime. Mrs. Eddy maintained that spiritual evolution alone was worthy the exercise of divine power, and she could not accept this blundering and ruthless process of evolution as being the work of an all-intelligent and loving God, that was Principle. Knowing that all error proceeds from the evidence before the material senses, she asked, “May not Darwin be right in thinking apehood preceded MORTAL manhood?” if man is material and originates in an egg, who shall say that he is not primarily dust? Did man, whom God created with a word, originate in an egg? When Spirit made all, did it leave aught for matter to create? Man springs solely from Mind. The belief that matter supports life would make Life, or God, mortal. (See 543:17-20) To Mrs. Eddy, mortal man had nothing to do with the man God made in His own image and likeness. He was what Mrs. Eddy defines in her Glossary (591:25) under “Mortal Mind.” When she used such words as germ, germinate, species, seed, progenitors, evolve, propagate, etc., they were used to denote the gradual appearing in human experience of the image, the true idea, of God. The caricature presented by the senses must be supplanted by the true man—the man in God's image and likeness. What looks like the steady step-by-step gain of man is simply attaining higher and higher views of God, which, in turn, cause us to lay down the mortal viewpoint. As we “through suffering or through Science” lay down the mortal viewpoint, God's universe is revealed intact as the only and ever-present reality. Spiritual evolution is caused by spiritual education recognizing matter as less and less real, and accepting good alone as real. (See 267:19.)

Starting Every Thought From God

Margie: Mrs. Eddy took a radical departure from both the scientific and religious thinking of the world in her day. In everything she did she started with God. Never before had a metaphysician started with God, in divine logic, and proceeded without deviating from God's point of view.

Today, standing on the threshold of the seventh thousand-year period, we see signs on every hand and in every scientific subject that the practical metaphysics stated in Mrs. Eddy's writings are gaining ground, and supplanting the ignorance of God and man's relation to God that prevailed in the nineteenth century, Mrs. Eddy showed humanity how to start right by starting with God, and that to start right is to end right. This “leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” is ever at work. During the past century this leaven has wrought great changes in the world's thinking, and in the ages to come it will continue its work until the entire mass of error has been destroyed, and Truth is glorified in man's spiritual freedom. (117:31)

Marie: On page 118 of the textbook Mrs. Eddy speaks of the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ, Truth, hidden in sacred secrecy from the visible world, as foretold by Jesus' parable. What is this second appearing in the flesh—what is the meaning of the “Word made flesh”? Did Mrs. Eddy also provide a “link” in the chain of being?

Moderator: Yes, Marie. As Revelator, Discoverer, and Founder of Christian Science she certainly provided a link in the chain of being. Demonstration is the life-link through which Truth destroys error. Mrs. Eddy's life was a continual demonstration of her teaching. It is this demonstrating power—this demonstrating of the Truth—that is the life-link. Her life was the language of Spirit; it was through spiritual sense alone that she carried out her mission. The Word is made flesh in our lives as we demonstrate the teaching of Mary Baker Eddy, because Christian Science is the Word made flesh. It shows scientifically how to escape from the belief of living in a matter body,

As we have already brought out, when we study mathematics or any scientific subject we go out from the principle of that subject. In mathematics, for instance, we go out from the principle and stay with the principle; we don't interject human opinions or substitute our false notions for what 25 x 25 should be. Mrs. Eddy was the first divine philosopher to start all her reasoning from God. We too must learn to start every thought from God.

Rocky: When you say, “start every thought from God,” what do you mean, and how can we do it?

Mind

Johnny: You start with Mind by going to Science and Health for ideas of Mind. The one Mind that is God is the only Mind and that Mind is your Mind too, since it is the only Mind. That Mind gives you all the intelligence and power you need since it is the only basis, the only law. It is the all-seeing and all-knowing Mind which, when you stay with it, gives you the ideas you need. Mind gives you the vision.

Spirit

In Spirit, since the Mind that gave us the ideas is the only real Mind, we keep these ideas pure. We don't mix them with beliefs of matter because we know that these ideas alone are substance and reality. As we dedicate ourselves to keeping pure the vision we received when we went to Mind in prayer, this vision grows and develops. Discerning the difference between material beliefs and spiritual ideas brings understanding and unfoldment. As we worship what Mind presents, our thought is more and more purified. Purity, Mrs. Eddy says, is the path to perfection (Marginal heading, p. 337). “In proportion to his purity is man perfect” (ibid).

Soul

In Soul we persevere in this direction until we become the image and likeness of the vision we had in Mind. “Mind,” Mrs. Eddy says, “is the Soul of all.” Mind is the identity of all we are aware of, We learn that what we saw in Mind, and which we found to be good, and the only, in Spirit, now becomes changeless good in Soul, and all else is forsaken. Soul becomes our only Ego.

Principle

As we wed Mind, Spirit, and Soul into one system it becomes our Principle. There is no other way to arrive at our Principle than to go the way of Mind, Spirit, and Soul and see them as one system which then constitutes the Principle from which Life, Truth, and Love f low.

Life

Life is always that circle where (1) thought goes back to Mind for fresh vision; (2) we keep that vision pure and worship it, in Spirit; (3) in Soul we persevere in the direction of becoming the image and likeness of the vision Mind gave us; here we find our true identity; (4) then in Principle, our fourth step, we wed the first three steps we took in Mind, Spirit, and Soul, into one system as our Principle, (5) out of that, once again flows the newness of Life and the laying down of the mortal viewpoint because we can't hold two opposite viewpoints at the same time,

What we just did is the method for providing ourselves with perpetual inspiration, regeneration, multiplication, and mutation to higher and higher possibilities of isness or being.

Truth

In Truth we find that if we have gone this way of Life, and have arrived at the isness of Life, we have gained dominion, and have the true divine consciousness that is health and wholeness. We have arrived at the Christ-consciousness that automatically destroys error. Truth is the ideal, the standard that is the result of having gone the way of Life.

Love

In Love there is no error to be destroyed. Love is the all-embracing allness from which all error has been excluded. It is the fulfilment of God's plan for every idea. Love meets every human need by knowing that man, as God's perfect reflection, has never had a need.

Moderator: Thank you, Johnny. When we spiritually understand these seven synonymous terms they begin, automatically, to become numerals of infinity which can be used in any order. Just so, when we are familiar with the value of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, we can use these numerals in any order. But before we understand the seven synonymous terms we cannot use them in any order, anymore than we could use 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., in just any order before we knew the value of each of these numbers. Once we do understand the value of the numbers we can use them infinitely, in infinitely diverse calculations. When we know our seven synonymous terms and stay with them alone, all error is excluded, and we can use the seven synonyms for God in a spiritual calculus of infinity. This is the Bride-consciousness that comes down from God. This is Love wedded to its own spiritual idea. The spiritual meaning of the seven synonymous terms for God appears to us only as mortality disappears. The synonyms, understood spiritually, reveal eternity, newness of Life.

As this purification and spiritualization of our thought goes on, we leave false consciousness behind and rise to the true sense of Love, the city foursquare where Love is wedded to its own spiritual idea. “Then cometh the marriage feast, for this revelation will destroy forever the physical plagues imposed by material sense” (575:3).

Tommy: In this city foursquare or bridal consciousness (spiritual divinely scientific consciousness) there are no matter bodies, no corporeal structures. It is a city of the Spirit in which we calculate or reckon only with spiritual ideas; and the carnal beliefs involved in human procreation resulting in sin, sickness, and death are forever precluded.

Elsie: When do you think we will reach this purely spiritual and divinely scientific consciousness?

Bill: Mrs. Eddy says it is a present possibility (574:2).

Billy: What keeps us from making more progress toward reality? What keeps us from exchanging our material consciousness for the spiritual scientific consciousness?

Moderator: Mrs.Eddy says that “it is their materiality that clogs the progress of students...it is materialism through which the animal magnetizer preys and in turn becomes a prey” (Mis.156:19). It is the belief that life, substance, and intelligence are in the body, and that mortal mind's sensations can reproduce man, can form blood, flesh, and bones; in other words, that matter is the medium of man. (372:6) The footsteps of thought, rising above material standpoints and these deep-rooted carnal beliefs, are slow and portend a long night to the traveler in the journey from sense to Soul. (174:9)

Anna: This is born out by the tenacity with which people cling to all the “suffer-it-to-be-so-now” statements that Mrs. Eddy makes. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy wrote for all mankind—for the confirmed materialist, who is in no way prepared for her more advanced teaching, as well as for the spiritually-minded. For instance, quite often students interpret her statement under the marginal heading of “Scientific obstetrics” as referring to human birth, the birth of a mortal (463:6). Also many statements in her chapter Marriage, written in the spirit of Lewis Stern's, “The Lord tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb,” are belabored and given great priority. The real spiritual essence of that chapter, however, is her equating of corporeal creation with the great red dragon of the Apocalypse as she does on page 56:10- 12, under the marginal heading “Marriage temporal.” We also see her grand and lofty spiritual instruction on the last two pages of the chapter “Marriage” (68:27 to 69:30) where she gives us the child of the regeneration. (See Mis. 167.) This trenchant incisive spiritual truth is quietly swept under the carpet in the spirit of “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee (Acts 24:25); at the moment I am not ready to partake of the living waters of practical operative Christian Science.” Material sense never has a “convenient season for the Christ.”

As Christian Scientists we shouldn't shrink from teaching Mrs. Eddy's most spiritually advanced statements where they pertain to subjects of vital importance in daily living. We should ever be consistent in going out from the standpoint of Spirit. We know there can be no consciousness of matter or of human procreation and physical bodies when we take the standpoint of Spirit.

Mrs. Eddy's fearless and uncompromising stand on marriage and progeny in her early teaching aroused great hatred and resentment. She was burned in effigy in the Boston Square. In effigy, resembling a wild witch, she was carried about in a cage, in a show of resentment and hostility as people vented their frustration against a teaching they did not understand.

It was this total lack of comprehension of the great spiritual message she brought that caused Mrs. Eddy to add the chapter “Marriage” to her first edition of Science and Health.

Bill: In his Diary, Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 33, Gilman records:

She [Mrs. Eddy) related that previous to the time when the chapter on “Marriage” was written she found that people were beginning to say of her doctrines that they were against marriage; that she was undermining the institution of the family; that her teaching led to the separation of husbands and wives and the breaking up of family relations, etc.

This grew until it appeared such an obstacle that it appeared to be a solid wall to her further progress. In this extremity [and] through its attendant suffering, she was impelled to the writing of the chapter on “Marriage,” and when it came out it was declared to be the best thing on “Marriage” ever written. [Mortal mind was satisfied.] “it had its birth in the travail of soul that keenly sensed the need of the hour,” she said.On the subject of marriage and progeny Mary Baker Eddy met with the same adamant and inexorable resistance that Jesus had met with nearly two thousand years before.

In the face of this manifested inflexible and obdurate philistine materialism Mrs. Eddy patiently bowed, and meekly awaited the spiritual growth that would vindicate her views. In an essay on the subject of “Marriage and Offspring” she wrote:The wise man saith, “When I was a child I thought as a child, etc.” The wisdom of this and of every period is temperance, to wait on the divine energy's development of moral strength and human possibilities. To push a fact to its ultimate sometimes so injures the predicate as to lose instead of gain time in the unfolding of God's plan.

The absolute in divine Science is an infinite fact approachable in time by degrees; its ultimate is eternity, its footsteps are time. Marriage and offspring are mortal conditions which take their origin in the human, and not in the divine Mind. It is a great and solemn question how far to press the divine facts of being, and their manifestations, into present human experience and practise (Fragments, p. 109. See Appendix).(The past century and a quarter with its growth in spirituality have made the world more receptive to Mrs. Eddy's views on marriage and progeny.)

Mortal Life a Dream

Moderator: Yes, Bill, Mrs. Eddy was always wise and discreet, knowing that more spiritual education would show material creation to be a mirage. In the following instruction this point is brought out clearly. She asks:

Is mortal life a dream? Yes? Then you admit the necessity of dreams so long as you entertain the belief of mortal life. Suppose you reverse this statement, and begin your logic logically, so that one wrong statement will not include another one; and you must abandon the first to avoid the last. Admitting that mortal life is a dream is admitting that it is something [giving us duality], when the fact remains that it is nothing, since there is no mortal life. God, Truth, is the only Life and a dream is not Truth. The dream and the dreamer are one, even the supposition that nothing is something. Eschew that statement of life unscientific; state it scientifically and commence your solution of the problem called life, on fact and not fable. Then you begin with Truth, not error; with God, not man; with Principle, not idea; and solve Life as having no beginning and no ending, the eternal now and forever. Then the mistakes of a false sense of life, sensation, and intelligence cease, and you are in and of an eternal Principle that has neither beginning nor end; and all paraphrase to the contrary is a fable and not the fact of existence, of God or of man. (DCC. 161. Sept. 20, 1909)

Sally: What is the earnest Christian Scientist working for?

Moderator: The dedicated student of Christian Science is working to understand the revelations of divine Science and to demonstrate the infallibility of divine metaphysics. He is working to become aware of the omnipresence of present perfection in which there is only the absolute supremacy of good.

Bessie: How will this absolute supremacy of good show itself?

Moderator: It will show itself in an understanding of the matrix of infinity where every synonym for God—and God conscious of Himself is man—fully reflects every other synonym. When a synonym is seen to reflect fully every other synonym it is called a numeral of infinity. When our consciousness operates as a divine infinite calculus it is conscious only of these numerals of infinity which are timeless and free of all error. In this divine infinite calculus (520:14) everything is at the focal point of the reflection of Spirit, which is the Bride-consciousness or the city foursquare. Hourly the Christian Scientist weds himself to God, ratifying a union predestined from all eternity. (Un. 17:8) Thus the supremacy of good will show itself.

A James Gilman Recollection

Florence: This is a state of consciousness that probably only Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy reached in this world. In James F. Gilman's Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 64, he relates the following conversation which he opened with:“You look like an entirely new personage today,” It seemed a droll remark to make, but it was a spontaneous expression.

She thought so, for an instant, perhaps, and then she began to say that last night she had come to revelations that had exceeded anything she had had before, in which she saw plainly that all things were put under her feet and the love of God was so manifest, it exceeded anything she could describe. “All things were dissolved in it; all sense of evil, all antagonism; nothing was left but the sea of God's immeasurable Love.”

I felt awed and as if a word in response from me would be a sacrilege ...In this experience it seems Mrs. Eddy's thought was at the focal point of the reflection of Spirit where only the numerals of infinity are operating and thought accepts the divine infinite calculus.

Receiving Revelation Direct From God

Marie: Mrs. Eddy, as the Revelator and Discoverer of divine Science, received revelation direct from God—from Principle, Love—and her writings are concerned with teaching us how we also can receive revelation in the same way. How do we start?

Kathleen: We start by studying every chapter in the textbook—“by studying thoroughly the letter and imbibing the spirit,” always remembering that “the human self must be evangelized.” Purity, Mrs. Eddy says, is the cornerstone of all spiritual building. Righteousness, peace, purity are the landmarks of Science. Purity is the path to perfection, and in proportion to his purity man is perfect (337:16), because only purity can reflect Truth and Love. For this reason Love insists that we shall be tried and purified.

Jesus was hated because his purity was an ever-present rebuke to the impurity and carnality of his persecutors. If we want to receive revelation we must follow the example set by Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy. We must not resist the fiery baptism that burns up the chaff of error with the fervent heat of Truth and Love, melting and purifying even the gold of human character. (565:20) Only through this purifying process can we find our true identity in our divine Principle, Love, where “white-robed purity [unites] in one person masculine wisdom and feminine love (64:23).

So, if we want to receive revelation direct from God, as did Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy, we must work for purity, symbolized by Life and Love. In no other way can we realize and demonstrate the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea. (561:22)

Moderator: Yes, Kathleen, we can't remind ourselves often enough that purity is an idea or characteristic of Spirit. By taking the standpoint of Spirit and not diverging from that standpoint, problems will melt and be lost sight of because we can't hold two opposite viewpoints at the same time. What we put into the scale of Spirit we take away from the scale of matter. Ask: “How does God, Spirit, see this situation?” Mind, God, imparts purity. As we discern Mind's impartation as the only impartation, the only substance, the only reality, and persevere in that effort—always as a three-in-one or Mind-Spirit-Soul effort—it becomes our Principle, our Life Principle, which reveals Truth that is of the nature of Love and perfection.

Mary Baker Eddy's teachings introduce a completely new standpoint that, sooner or later, we all must take. Either suffering or Science will cause us to take this standpoint of Spirit which her textbook sets forth. Mrs. Eddy's logic is divine, and is the solution for every ill to which man has fallen heir. Faithfully following her divine logic leads us to the Bride-consciousness where the infallibility of divine metaphysics is unfailingly demonstrated.

Her divine logic is set forth in a Science that must be learned. Fortunately much has come out in the past forty years that explains in detail the letter of the system of Christian Science, and when “the letter and the spirit bear witness, the infallibility of divine metaphysics will be demonstrated” (330:8). We unlock Science and Health as the understanding of its message is made practical in our lives; then the letter and the spirit become one.

SESSION V: SOME HIGHLIGHTS
IN THE EARLY HISTORY

EARLY CLASSES

Moderator: Today we want to look into a little of the early history of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy took seriously the Genesis statement that God had created man in His own image and likeness. She never evaded what was implied by that statement or tried to sweep it under the rug. The very basis of her teaching was that matter must be translated into its original language, Mind, and must be given its spiritual instead of material signification. This translation of matter into Mind left no room for “man that is born of a woman”—human birth, sin, sickness, death, or anything else that is not in accord with God's image and likeness.

Grace: She saw that the first account of creation in Genesis had nothing to do with a material universe being created; just the opposite: it was a step by step appearing, through revelation, of the perfection of God and man that has always existed. But humanity had been blind to it in the same way that mankind was blind to the fact that the earth was round until Columbus and other brave navigators proved the earth's flatness to be in the minds of mortals. Similarly Mrs. Eddy saw that man's imperfection existed only in mortal mentality, in ignorance of spiritual facts. This radical discovery by Mary Baker Eddy called for a total restructuring of human consciousness—a mutation out of mortality into the spiritual freedom of man as God's our true Mind’s, image and likeness.

Mrs. Eddy said, “Oh, if others could only see what I see, how they would work and strive to express nothing but the spirit of Truth.... We need to practise this Science in whatever we are doing; this gives us the wisdom to explain it to others.”Mrs. Eddy’s First Pupil

Hiram S. Crafts

Tina: How did Mrs. Eddy begin teaching her revelation to others?

Grace: Providence provided. In the summer of 1866 Mrs. Eddy was boarding with Mr. and Mrs. George Clark in Lynn. Among the thirteen other boarders was a shoe-factory worker named Hiram S. Crafts, and his wife. Crafts had no intellectual antagonism to overcome. Heart-hungry for religion, he was the type that would be most easily reached by Christian Science during its first twenty-five-year promulgation and development. He sat next to Mrs. Eddy at the Clark table and often lingered after supper to question and listen. He became Mrs. Eddy's first pupil. She had wondered how her Science could be taught, and had thought it might take centuries of spiritual growth. But when young Crafts evinced a great desire to learn the healing art, Mrs. Eddy was quick to see God's hand in providentially providing a pupil, and was impelled to begin at once the stupendous work of teaching her Science to another. Her success in teaching Hiram Crafts the healing art, and his success in practicing it, was a revelation to Mrs. Eddy, and showed her this teaching could be done. Soon others applied for instruction.

Margie: Sibyl Wilbur has left a heart-warming picture of the first group-class in The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 198. The students who were drawn together, she says, were shoe-factory workers: “their hands were stained with the leather and tools of the day's occupation; their narrow lives had been cramped mentally and physically. Their thoughts were often no more elevated than their bodies were beautiful. They could not come to Mrs. Glover in the daytime, for their days were full of toil. At night, then, this first class met, and it was in the heat of July and August. In the barely furnished upper chamber a lamp was burning which added to the heat and threw weird shadows over the faces gathered round a plain deal table. Insects buzzed at the windows, and from the common over the way the hum of the careless and free, loosed from the shops into the park, invaded the quiet of the room. Yet that quiet was permeated by the voice of a teacher at whose words the hearts of those workmen burned within them.”

Jackie: Is there any record of what Mrs. Eddy taught them?

Margie: Yes, what she taught at that time was later put into a pamphlet called “The Science of Man.” I understand Mrs. Eddy wrote it in longhand, and each student had a copy which he was supposed to study. It consisted of questions and answers.

The first question was: What is God?

Her answer was: God is Principle, wisdom, love, and truth. (Science of Man, 1870. See Appendix.)

Today we are all familiar with Mrs. Eddy's explanations of God; in fact, her writings have revolutionized the entire Western world's thinking about God. But in 1866 people in general thought of God as a man with a long beard who lived up in the sky and could be either wrathful or benign. Few people now think of God seriously in that way.

Marie: From the very beginning there was unequivacal evidence that Mrs. Eddy was a uniquely inspired and remarkably gifted teacher. In a few short lessons she was able not only to show these humble factory workers her concept of God, but to give them sufficient practical grasp of it so they could go out and heal all manner of diseases with what they had learned from her. It was healing that mattered, and she taught her students the healing art.

Moderator: From what you have read in your research work, can anyone give a further description of Mrs. Eddy's early classes and how she taught?

Anna: Usually she would start by asking each pupil his or her idea of God. This didn't take very long, as a rule. But after the answers were all in, she began to open up to them a view of God, of divinity, that shook the very foundations of their world as they had known it up to then. She took away their material sense of a God that was busy attending to a strife-ridden universe or that answered prayers for a better job, a better boss, or a better farm. In place of this manlike God, she showed them—not with human logic but with divine logic—a divine Principle which was as oblivious of error as is the principle of mathematics or the principle of music. It was a Principle that knew no sorrow, no tears, no pain, no evil of any kind. It knew no materiality. Mrs. Eddy showed them “the heart of divinity,” a divine Love that was the Principle of man's being. She taught them that all is infinite Mind, infinitely manifested in light and loveliness, needing only to be recognized.

She encouraged them to know they had the supremacy of thought and that error cannot defy the Truth. They were to realize that evil had no power over them or over their patient, and that evil could not make them conscious of fear. A salient point that she brought out again and again in many different ways was that to be born into the belief of matter (human birth) was the last enemy to be overcome. The enemy was physical life, which is really death. “The divine must overcome the human at every point.”

She instructed them to put their patients in the care of Principle—to hold them in thought as conditions of Mind—and to know that they reflect and express only the qualities and attributes of God, of Love. Their “patient” existed only in Mind, God. Know that God, your own real Mind, is the only thinker. “Mortal mind cannot transcend itself and find your patient if you hold him in thought as a condition of Mind.” God, the only Mind, is the Mind of man. The thoughts coming from this Mind can transmit only what comes from God. Jesus recognized nothing between himself and God: “I and the Father [spiritual understanding] are one thing.” When we understand the Principle we are one with the Principle.

Georgine Milmine

Francie: McClure's Magazine printed a series of derogatory articles on Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy, but Georgine Milmine, their reporter who prepared the articles and made exhaustive enquiries about the early days of Christian Science, did seem in the following, to give a factual account. She questioned a number of people then alive in Lynn who could remember the early days, and she stresses the growing sense of wonder these people recalled over the devotion of “Mary Patterson's” followers, and the reports of healing work. (Mrs. Eddy's second husband was Dr. Patterson.) Mrs. Eddy seems to have had much trouble with individual students who caused her great disappointment, “But for every deserter there were several new adherents.” And their number constantly increased.

What Georgine Milmine seemed to find most remarkable was the vivid recollection of those she interviewed—even of those who afterwards were alienated from Mrs. Eddy—of the power of her teaching. All said that what they got from Mrs. Eddy “was beyond equivalent in gold and silver.” She writes: “they speak of a certain spiritual or emotional exaltation which Mrs. Eddy was able to impart in her class-room; a feeling so strong, that it was like the birth of a new understanding, and seemed to open to them a new heaven and a new earth....They came out of her classroom to find that for them the world had changed. They lived in a new set of values....One of the students who was closest to her at that time says that to him the world outside her little circle seemed like a mad house where each inmate was given over to his delusion of love, or gain, or ambition, and the problem which confronted him was how to awaken them from the absurdity of their pursuits.” (McClure's Magazine, Vol. xix, p. 109)

Bill: They came to her classes to learn the Principle of healing, just as one would go to a class to learn the principle of mathematics.

Bancroft

There were those who confused Christian Science with “suggestion.” But they soon learned that the Science of Christ is something that must be learned. It can't be suggested. You don't suggest mathematics. Mrs. Eddy patiently persisted in teaching her pupils the fundamentals. Bancroft, an early student of Mrs. Eddy's, says she was always ready to respond to the call of the students; her work with them was never finished. His book, Mrs. Eddy as I knew Her in 1870, states that every meeting with her and every letter received from her was a lesson. This continued for years. Regarding moral virtue and the argument that it had nothing to do with salvation, Mrs. Eddy stoutly disagreed: “Moral Science,” she said, “is a preliminary to Christian Science.” He who is resolved to give his all, even his life, for God, cannot be vanquished. Moral resistance, moral regeneration, Mrs. Eddy felt, knows no chances, no risks; it is linked to an immortal Principle, and destined for certain triumph. No immorality of any kind could ever attach itself to Mrs. Eddy's teachings.

Her healings in those early days, writes Bancroft, were a wonderful example. She was absolutely fearless in the face of sickness. He tells of the authority with which she commanded and acted in the face of dire emergencies. Mrs. Eddy knew that man's likeness to God is never a physical likeness; God doesn't know anything about sick bodies or well bodies. God is spiritual and His likeness is spiritual and is harmony's selfhood. Sickness was just aggressive mental suggestion. The tragedy of human life, Mrs. Eddy knew, was that humanity clings to its self-deceived sense of evil when all the while the truth is at hand that can free it. The terrible force of a lie can only have power over us if we accept its claim to place and power as a reality. “Outside the material sense of things all is harmony.”

Calvin C. Hill

To Calvin C. Hill, she wrote, “it seems to the material senses that pain, etc., are in the lungs or elsewhere in matter, but the fact is that pain or suffering of any sort is no more in the body or matter in our waking state than it is in our night dream, for both states are dreams and not the reality of being” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Third Series, p. 44).

A great point of Mrs. Eddy's teaching was that God did not know evil. She told the class that if they stood in front of a mirror with a hole in their clothes the hole would be in the reflection. The class all agreed. Then she asked, Would it be possible to get it out of the reflection so long as it was in the original?

“No,” replied the class.

Then she explained: God never changes. He is eternally the same, isn't He?

“Yes.”

Now, she said, if God were conscious of sickness, sin, and death, we could never expect to overcome them, for the divine consciousness doesn't change, and we could never remove from the reflection what is in the original. If God knew evil we could never overcome it.

Mrs. Eddy always directed the thoughts of her students to Principle—to the demands of Principle. Her class teaching transcended the medium of words. (From We Knew Mary Baker Eddy series)

Bringing Forth the Word Itself Being What She Says

Moderator: In her teaching we are told there were “no extra words to veil thought or to cover vacancy. She achieved the great thing: her thinking stands forth in its naked sincerity as if she had done away with the medium of speech and had brought forth the Word itself which is one with thought and deed.... She is herself what she says. She has lived it out, and so it is that her words kindle life in others” (From The Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 1911, International Edition).

Anna: The secret of Mrs. Eddy's great achievements can be explained on no other basis than her at-one-ment with God and her boundless spirit of universal love for all mankind. She knew that to live Love, to manifest the very presence of Love, would heal anything. Mrs. Eddy lived the truth she spoke; she lived it so simply, humbly, and completely that she proved what the Master meant when he said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Her exaltation of God uncovered evil and its methods to her. The more a mathematician or musician understands his subject, practically, the more errors in those subjects stand out to him.

As she told Frank Gale, a healer must never recognize disease in a patient, not even as a belief. The healer must go to the patient feeling that the patient is well, and the healer is going to show him that he is well and in full possession of his health and all his faculties. The healer must lose sight of the personality and realize only the presence of God—of the spiritual and perfect. He must feel the Love that doesn't fail.

Effect of Mrs. Eddy's Teaching

Moderator: What effect did Mrs. Eddy's teaching have on her students?

Juliann: From the memoirs of some of these early students there were a variety of responses. Not one left the class feeling the same about God as he had upon entering. Here and there a student felt Mrs. Eddy had taken away his old familiar God and he was lost. Others stood in awe before what had been opened up to them and felt centuries of spiritual growth would be required before they could make practical what they had learned. After three or four lessons, however, Mrs. Eddy would require each one to do some healing work. One student—believe it was Ira Knapp—records he left the class with gravest doubts that he could heal anyone, but arriving at his lodging place his landlady stopped to greet him, and asked him what he had learned. He told her of the assignment and said he didn't know of anyone who needed healing. She immediately replied, “I am deaf in one ear. I would like you to heal me.” He went to his room and gave her a treatment as he had been taught in Mrs. Eddy's class, and the woman received a perfect healing. When the class resumed, says this student, each one was able to report a healing. Some stood in mute adoration and profound reverence before the healings they had been able to perform at Mrs. Eddy's command.

Lulu Blackman

Francie: In her memoirs, Lulu Blackman of Nebraska recounts:

Mrs. Eddy awakened us to the realization that she taught no mere theory but the practical living Truth when she closed the third lesson with these words: “Now go home and take your first patient.” In my own estimation I was not ready to take a patient. She had taken away my Lord, and as yet I knew not the God she had revealed. It was a great relief to remember that I was a complete stranger in Boston and so could not possibly be called upon to give a treatment.... The relief was short-lived, for when I opened the door to my rooming place a member of the family was found to be very ill with erysipelas. When he saw that I was making haste to escape to my room he called to me: “if you can do anything for me, why don't you do it?” The swift healing that followed my obedience to Mrs. Eddy's demand that I take my first patient gave me a keen insight Into her characteristic faith in the power of the Word of God when applied through the Science she was giving to the world. She had arranged no details, provided no patients. She gave the command and knew God could “supply the wisdom and occasion for a victory over evil” (571:16).

The experience connected with this case of healing revealed to me something of the immensity of the work Mrs. Eddy had accomplished in her three days in the classroom. She had not taken up the question of animal magnetism but she had established for us her concept of God, and this true concept of God rescued and defended me from the devil and his assistants in a time of such temptation as I had never before known. Suggestions taking form in words declared that I did not know enough of the Christian Science method to use it and declared that there was a power in my own mind that I could use instead. Error pleaded with me to substitute mortal mind for immortal Mind, arguing that mortal mind was my natural habitat, and that immortal Mind was too transcendental to avail.

I had been precipitated into a seeming mental realm where the supposititious forces of evil sought to establish the claim to equal or transcend the power of God. I realized that there was a greater question here than that of mere physical healing. The decision to rely upon divine Mind alone was made, and I answered the tempter, “I will not resort to will power, even if the young man dies.” Then, as a ministering angel, this scriptural verse came to me: “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). 1 had forgotten the patient, but as I turned to leave the room I saw he was sleeping peacefully and that complete healing had taken place.

Thus Mrs. Eddy revealed herself to us through the power of the Word. She effaced the sense of her personality so completely that she thought, spoke, and acted from the standpoint of oneness with Principle. In Unity of Good, p. 48, referring to God, Mrs. Eddy says: “He sustains my individuality. Nay, more—He is my individuality.” So many statements made in her writings are illuminated by the fact that she was able to demonstrate what she taught.

In subsequent lessons, she took up the question of evil. I shall never forget Mrs. Eddy as she appeared when she turned from the contemplation of all good to the supposititious claims of evil, called devil. It was a revelation of Truth, but it was also an unconscious revelation of the price of learning Love which this woman had paid through vital experience, through the things she had suffered because of the exaltation of God in her own consciousness. The picture of this loved teacher as she shared the hemlock cup with her half-comprehending students is word painted in Science and Health: “Remembering the sweat of agony which tell in holy benediction on the grass of Gethsemane, shall the humblest or mightiest disciple murmer when he drinks from the same cup, and think, or even wish, to escape the exalting ordeal of sin's revenge on its destroyer?” (48:10).

Kathleen: Time and again students leaving reports said it was as though for the first time in their lives reality had broken through to them. It broke through not as theory but as fact. The students caught Mrs. Eddy's concept of the Christ as universally operative Truth. The regeneration followed their understanding that life, substance, intelligence was in Mind, the perfect Mind that knew no error.

Life, substance, intelligence was never in matter, never in body. Matter must be held as shadow, and what it shadowed forth was the life, substance, intelligence that was in Mind, God. This perception and conviction was the exact opposite of the world's belief. But just as Copernicus reversed our thinking about the sun rising and setting, Mrs. Eddy came to reverse our thinking about the relation between God and man. Astronomical science has destroyed the false theory as to the relations of the celestial bodies. Christian Science, says Mrs. Eddy, will surely destroy the greater error as to our terrestrial bodies.

Recess

Hiram Crafts Again

Moderator: Before we continue, let's return for a moment to Hiram Crafts, Mrs. Eddy's very first pupil.

When he showed sincerity, she helped and encouraged him. By spring he was able to run the following ad in the Taunton newspaper:

TO THE SICK: Would say unhesitatingly, I can cure you, and have never failed to cure Consumption, Catarrh, Scrofula, Dyspepsia, and Rheumatism, with many other forms of disease and weakness, in which I am especially successful. If you give me a fair trial and are not helped, I will refund your money.

Then followed a lengthy testimonial of healing, written and signed by one of his patients.

That Hiram Crafts was able to run this ad and actually fulfil the promise of healing, testifies to Mrs. Eddy's power as a teacher, and also to her life-long trait of total self-effacement. The fact that Hiram could each day talk over his case load with his Teacher was no doubt the reason he could advertise and “say unhesitatingly, I can cure you.” It was the success of God's work that Mrs. Eddy was interested in and concerned with, not her personal achievements.

Thus she shepherded all her early pupils. As soon as they mastered the Science of Mind-healing she would step into the background, always letting them take full credit for their work while she watchfully and patiently helped them over difficult places without emphasizing her presence. She gloried in the success of her pupils because she knew that the Christian disciple could best become a fisher of men through the healing ministry. It was healing that would draw men to the truth, though she knew that physical healing was the smallest part of Christian Science. It was only the bugle call to thought and action. In Rudimental Divine Science (2:23) she states, “The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin.” But it was the healing of sickness that drew people.

Antagonism Aroused by Basic Doctrine

Florence: The healings did bring other students, but the actual imparting of the basis of Mrs. Eddy's healing ability stirred up great opposition. The opposition arose because in a practical way—not merely as something preached from the pulpit—Mrs. Eddy's teaching made God All-in-all, and the mortal nothing. God was the substance, Life, and intelligence of all that appeared. “Matter held as shadow,” she said, “is the idea of God; but matter held as substance was belief and error.” A shadow has no life, substance or intelligence of its own. We must trace it back to its origin where we find what its substance is, and what it is shadowing forth.

Implicit in her teaching was the nothingness of mortal birth and death. Her teaching made practical Jesus' statement to Salome which has been preserved in a booklet entitled, Fragments of a Lost Gospel, published by the Oxford University Press. It records the following sayings of Jesus that are regarded as authentic by scholars:When Salome asked when those things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said, “When ye trample upon the garment of shame, when the two become one and the male with the female, neither male nor female.” The meaning being that Christ's kingdom on earth would not be manifested until man had returned to the state of innocence in which sexual ideas and relations had no place. When Salome asked how long death would prevail, the Lord said, “So long as ye women bear children; for I am come to destroy the works of the female.” Logia of Jesus, Christian Science Journal, Vol. 25, Jesus was asked, “When shall the dominion of death cease?” Jesus saith, “As long as [material) birth continues (death will not cease, but] I am come to destroy the works of birth.” (See Matt. 5:17; 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34-35; 23:29; 1 Cor. 7:7-9, Mark 13:17. (From Lida Fitzpatrick Notes, page 28, See Appendix.)

Bill: Mrs. Eddy, fulfilling Jesus' Apocalyptic vision, came to lift the veil of mesmerism and reverse what humanity believed since the Adam-dream overtook mankind. Mrs. Eddy taught that the origin, substance, and mind of “man that is born of woman” was the opposite of God or Spirit. “Will-blind, stubborn, and headlong—cooperates with appetite and passion” (490:8). Remember, in 1908 Mrs. Eddy (56:13) withdrew permission for marriage, but said, “Marriage will continue, “putting it into the category of resistance to revealed Truth. “Lust” is generic error. “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die [die to all purity of conception].” Mrs. Eddy correlated “garden” with “body” in the Scripture: “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, lest ye die.” So, “the garden was a term used to signify the body in the first records of mythology; sexuality and self-abuse [were] the forbidden knowledge. [Every sexual emotion is a conspiracy against Science. (DCC.79)] Man was not to presume on the prerogatives of his Creator, but to recognize God the Father and Mother of all” (Third edition of Science and Health, pp. 126-7, Vol. 11). Matter, said Mrs. Eddy, cannot connect mortals with the true origin and facts of being in which all must end. (491) This teaching was an intolerable affront to men of letters and worldly affairs, as well as to the medical and theological professions. It was this same teaching nineteen centuries earlier that had so outraged the high priests and clergy of that day and caused them to regard Jesus as an enemy of the people and pronounce on him the death sentence.

Moderator: Preserved in the Alice Orgain Collection is the following explanation given by Mrs. Eddy on this subject. It was also confirmed to me, personally, by an elderly lady, in 1937, who sixty years earlier, as a young woman, had been in one of Mrs. Eddy's classes. Mrs. Eddy's words had made a profound impression on her when she explained to the class that Jesus was put to death because of his teaching on marriage and progeny. Such sayings as we find in Luke 20:34-35; Luke 23:29, and his curse on human motherhood (see Mark 13:17) which appears also in Matthew and Luke, reached the ears of the rulers of the synagogue, and they knew it was time to take action. They reasoned, said Mrs. Eddy, that if they let him go on healing, and teaching his dangerous doctrine, soon all men would believe him and then what would happen to their nation?

They considered that “it is expedient for us that one man should die...that the whole nation perish not.”

A member of the class said, “But Mrs. Eddy, what would happen if no more children were born?”

“The sooner the whole ghastly farce would cease!” was Mrs. Eddy's emphatic answer.

Bessie: That would call for the “faith” we talked about during Session 1.

Florence: There can be no end to death as long as human procreation continues. “When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15) is a scriptural pronouncement which has never yet been broken. In reality, Mrs. Eddy says, “men and women have never multiplied. There was never a birth or death of man, since man is the idea inseparable from his divine Principle which exists and co-exists with God. Our only Father and Mother is God; therefore the offspring of the flesh, born of a woman, is no more real, scientific, or eternal than a tumor which the Christian Scientist labors to destroy and so heal the sick.... Is the connubial relation sin? Yes. Can you be a Christian Scientist and maintain it now, for honesty is Christian Science's first law? Can you uphold the old marriage relation which is legalized lust, and be a Christian Scientist?” (EOF. 2 & 79).

You can see why Mrs. Eddy was burned in effigy and hated as a race annihulist.

Mrs. Eddy counseled her students not to close their eyes to sin, and not to excuse error, because to justify self was to perpetuate the lie of material sense.

We must not bury our affections in matter. We must soar above the physical, and “stoop not to the arts by which the serpent wins his spellbound prey.” Error is belief, and belief is error, which God never made, “but all that worketh a lie was made after the creation of God, and fashioned after a lie, a belief of pleasure in matter. This led to sexual intercourse, and this belief of man and woman ming-ling brought forth another belief, and this was that man was a creator, and this error brought sin, sickness, and death.” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science of Man, EOF 209).

Sally: I know this teaching underlies every sentence in Science and Health. It is basic to her Science. But did Mrs. Eddy ever come out openly in print and say anything on marriage and progeny?

Moderator: Anna, do you have something on that?

Anna: Yes, there is an article called “Marriage and Progeny” preserved in Essays and other Footprints, page 14, which deals with this subject, in which Mrs. Eddy asks:Why do the lower animals suffer less than the human species from propagation? It must be because the sin of this false generation is less in the lower than in the higher species.

Is not suffering from error the penalty for error? Then is not that person farther from salvation who can sin and not suffer than he who suffers from sin? We read in Gen. 3:16 “Unto the woman he (God) said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.”

We learn from scripture that God, Principle, made all that was made and He made it good. Therefore He made all that is real and eternal. Then nothing really exists that is unlike God and is not the reflection of positive good unmixed with evil.

Is it more impossible for good to make evil than for Spirit to make its opposite called matter?

Does Spirit fraternize with the flesh? Is man a creator? Is lust divine? Is life, substance, and intelligence in matter?

If regeneration signifies spiritual resurrection from the flesh, one cannot be led to the bridal altar with the expectation of surrendering to the flesh and sincerely pray, “lead us not into temptation.” We read in Scripture, “Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:34).

Parents who understand spiritually the law of Truth, through disobedience thereto cannot improve the human race and propagate a generation more exempt from error. Is not sin exceedingly sinful in proportion to the light that is sinned against, and might not the offspring of such mental conditions be the wickedest generation since Adam and have to pay the heaviest debt of posterity? [And aren't we seeing this enacted in the turmoil raging in the world today?]

Our Master taught his followers explicitly to “call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father, which is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9).

The Hebrew Psalmist, David, when awakened to the scientific sense of being, as the Scripture declares, “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord” and he lamented his material origin, saying: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Pa. 51:5). Job ... [who] feared God, and eschewed evil, opened his lips and said, “Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived” (Job 3:3).

Dear Reader: These momentous questions and considerations I cannot answer or settle for you. God alone can and will do this and enlighten your understanding as to the true Scriptural import. The Bible and Science will sometime solve for each and every mortal this earthly problem of Marriage and Progeny.

Of this I am at present certain, that if marriage does increase a temptation to depart from Christ's teachings, it is not the union which Jesus sanctioned when he said, “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt l9:6). In other words, our Master assured us that they whom Spirit unites spiritually—for Spirit cannot unite materially—cannot be separated. [The union of the masculine and feminine qualities of God in each individual consciousness is that which cannot be put asunder.]Mrs. Eddy foresaw that this question of marriage and “legalized lust” with all its attendant hypocrisy could not forever be covered by an ecclesiastical blessing bent on perpetuating scholastic dogma and cold materialism. She wrote: “There will be greater mental opposition to the spiritual, scientific, meaning of the Scriptures [that is, to her divinely scientific interpretation of the Scriptures] than there has ever been since the Christian era began. The serpent, material sense, will bite the heel of the woman—will struggle to destroy the spiritual idea of Love; and the woman, this idea, will bruise the head of lust” (534:24).

Rocky: Why did Mrs. Eddy foresee such a fierce struggle?

Moderator: Because “the broadest facts array the most falsities against themselves, for they bring error from under cover. It requires courage to utter Truth [the truth that man is not born of the lust of the flesh); for the higher Truth lifts her voice, the louder will error scream,…” (97:21).

Why Discovery Was Hidden

Sally: The question is often asked: Why did Mrs. Eddy hide her discovery of the Science of the Christ in such a way that it would take another fifty years, as she once prophesied, to begin to glimpse it? Also she remarked to Laura Sargent that if she hid it anymore than she had already done, it never would be found. Why did she feel the necessity for hiding it in this way?

Moderator: To the eyes of spiritual discernment, of course, her discovery was not hidden. But since it was a revelation direct from God, it was far in advance of what mortals could understand. Even Mrs. Eddy constantly studied what she wrote; she declared that she was learning the higher meaning of it after writing it. What Jesus said nearly two thousand years ago is, for the most part, only today being correctly understood. The mystery of godliness must of necessity remain hidden until understanding arrives at the point of comprehension. Not until Mrs. Eddy arrived at the point of understanding attained by Jesus after his ascension, could she begin to explain the Science that lay behind his victory over death and the grave, and his ascension.

Grace: Also, Mrs. Eddy saw what happened to Jesus: how his divine teachings were misinterpreted; how the Christ of “theology” became an official personality. The priests and doctors of ecclesiastical law interpreted everything materially, while Jesus interpreted God and man spiritually. Following in the footsteps of Judaism, the creed of Romanism instituted a pope to forgive sins. They naturally supposed that if Jesus, as a man, could forgive sin, then another man could pardon sin too. It was this belief in a matter man that destroyed the understanding of the Christ, and what Christ is, as generic man, or the full reflection of the one infinite God, good.

Mrs. Eddy wanted to give time a chance to mature spiritual growth into a fitness to receive divine and eternal truths, so this divine teaching would not again be lost through material interpretation. It was through material interpretation that life, substance, and intelligence had been placed in matter—in flesh, blood, and bones—because of the false belief that sex is the creator of man rather than Mind, God. This belief that man is flesh, blood, and bones has demanded through the ages the sacrifice of blood to sprinkle its altars. This same belief caused the high priests to think that by crucifying the body they would be rid of troublesome Truth, just as centuries later the cardinals thought that by silencing Galileo they could prevent the physical fact that the earth rotated around the sun.

Mrs. Eddy hid her divine discovery in sacred secrecy until spiritual growth readied humanity for its reception. Then Truth is safe, and will not again be lost, as it would have been had it been put out into wholly material mentality.

Bessie: It isn't clear to me what you mean, Grace. Do you mean humanity was ready to receive Truth during her time, or isn't yet ready, or what?

Grace: In Mrs. Eddy's time, her students did not see the system and pure Science in the textbook. However, her loyal working students did get a very practical message from Science and Health and their understanding enabled them to perform healing work equal to that of the disciples of Jesus.

In establishing it as a Science, it must be learned individually. No one can learn arithmetic for you; no one can learn for you how to play the piano. But when a student has the textbook in which the Principle and rule are given, and the laws too are all given, it is only a matter of learning the letter and imbibing the spirit. It is the spirit that is super-important.

What Mrs. Eddy wanted to avoid was sinking Science in personality, and using it merely to glorify mortals. She wanted to avoid the crystalization of her barely understood message into a creed.

In 1947 The Honorable W. J. Brown wrote in Spectator (London), concerning the fate that overtakes wonderful God-anointed ideas:... In the field of religion a prophet ... will see a vision of truth. He expresses that vision as best he may in words.... What he says is only partly understood by those who hear him, and when they repeat what they understood him to have meant, there will already be a considerable departure from the original vision of the prophet. Upon what his disciples understand of the prophet's message, an organization, a church, will be built. The half-understood message will crystalize into a creed. Before long the principle concern of the church will be to sustain itself as an organization. To this end any departure from the creed must be controverted and if necessary suppressed as heresy. In a few score or few hundred years what was conceived of as a vehicle of a new and higher truth has become a prison for the souls of men.This is what Mrs. Eddy wanted to avoid, and tried desperately to avoid. Only as we consecrate existence to the Life which mortal sense cannot impair nor mortal belief destroy (428:15) are we ready for divine Truth. Then nothing is hidden. The textbook becomes an open book, and step by step we assimilate its message. Like understands like, in any subject. What Mrs. Eddy revealed is only hidden to material sense, to carnal mindedness, today, just as it was in her time.

Mrs. Eddy knew that if her message was accepted and understood it would spare humanity untold misery. Speaking from the platform on one occasion Mrs. Eddy exhorted her followers to greater effort in the attainment of spirituality—through studying the letter and imbibing the spirit. She warned them of the dire consequences if Christian Science was not understood and accepted.

“Must the earth again be deluged in blood?” was her ringing and impassioned plea.

Fervently she implored her followers to become real and consecrated warriors, devoting themselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science, which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, and death. (See Mis. 177:15.)

“Hitherto the records of Science have not been traced in blood. But,” prophesies Mrs. Eddy, “the time cometh when the material belief of man (the belief in human birth, and that sex rather than God is the creator of man) must yield to Science, and then will his spiritual self assert its superiority over matter, and the millennial peace will have come.

“I learn this parable of the fig tree, or budding promise of the nineteenth century: that when the wisdom of man is taken out of opinions and belief—and returns to the Principle of Science for its intelligence—the error of life will have given up its ghosts, and such a time as this hath not been from the beginning nor ever again will be. The first perception of the woe, the sin and suffering produced by material belief, by placing our intelligence in matter, may so ferment the passions of that age, that the violent reaction of credulity—after looking its first look upon the vagaries it has pursued, upon the phantom it has called reality—may baptize this monster error in the blood of its own believing, and the sun of its own center be forever darkened in that great and notable day, which shall be the end of the world to opinion and belief and the ushering in of the new happiness and new understanding of Science.

“That the approaching light of Science may come through sweeter footprints than were these, is the desire of my soul; yet, not my will but Thine, 0 Principle, be done” (EOF. 40). Through suffering or through Science each one is destined to learn his God identity.

All good is present, now and forever, but what will it take to awaken man to his present ownership of it all, and arouse him out of the illusion, out of the false belief, that he was born of a woman, born of the flesh, instead of born of God, of Truth, and of Love?

Moderator: It is certain that Mrs. Eddy's spiritual interpretation of Scripture will hasten the day of humanity's understanding of our God-being. At present, however, Old Theology seems as determined as ever to keep the Christ-idea of man's oneness with God from surfacing.

Kathleen, you have something to say. Please do.

Kathleen: In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, “The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love” (28:6).

Because of the unmatched radicalism of Mrs. Eddy's divine doctrine, and because of the malice and opposition the students met with on account of it, all of her early students soon fell away; but in their brief association with her they experienced a height, an intensity of life, they would never know again. As the years progressed, Mrs. Eddy softened her approach, coupling Principle with Love, and using “ Father— Mother” to appeal to the Christian thought. In her early classes, however, the abstract radicalism with which she presented her Science was too much for many of her students. Those who glimpsed her meaning went forth to heal all manner of disease and discord; but the record shows that the first fourteen years of teaching netted her no student who remained faithful and loyal to Christian Science, or able to be of assistance to her. Julia Bartlett who arrived in 1880 was to be the first of Mrs. Eddy's students to remain faithful and true to the teaching.

Sally: The antagonism to the basis of her “doctrine” was so everywhere present and awful that it was necessary for her to move continually from boarding house to boarding house while she was writing the textbook, Science and Health. But this antagonism and persecution wore “a precious jewel in its [ugly] head”—it slowly drove her to become more and more impersonal.

Juliann: Sarah Bagley's rooming house was one of the brighter sites in which she alighted. It was there that she met the nineteen year-old Kennedy who was working in a box factory. In his free time Richard Kennedy would join Mrs. Eddy and her hostess. Mrs. Eddy had converted Sarah Bagley from her belief in spiritualism to the Science she was teaching; and Sarah gave up her dressmaking and became a Christian Science healer.

By kerosene lamp, late at night, the three would gather and pour over Mary Baker Eddy's manuscripts, and a universe of unimaginable wonder and newness opened up to them.

Sally: Is this the same Richard Kennedy who later caused Mrs. Eddy so much trouble and forced her into a forty-year investigation of animal magnetism?

Moderator: Yes, Sally. Actually he did for Mrs. Eddy what Judas did for Jesus. It is always the crucifixion of the mortal that brings the crown.

Rocky: That Mrs. Eddy knew her discovery was unique and God ordained can be seen from a passage in her first published work called: Science of Man: “Unless the principle is understood you cannot act in it; and as it has never been taught in science by any written or published MSS from any known individual but me, I claim that it cannot have been understood, except by Elijah, Jesus, his disciples and Paul; and their writings do not teach it unless you understand their scientific meaning, and not the interpretation which belief has given them.” Fourteen years of teaching would pass before Mrs. Eddy found a student with sufficient spirituality to remain loyal.

Florence: When one reads of the heartbreaking trials, desertions, persecutions, money problems, etc., one can see that it took miraculous vision to sustain her. Only the steadfast conviction that she had a mission to fulfil the works of Christ Jesus on earth, could have upheld her during those first few years after her wonderful discovery.

Tommy: Many of Mrs. Eddy's early students took offense, deserted, and some even became bitter enemies because they took personally her rebukes—often sharp and incisive—when she only intended to rebuke the error being expressed. (Later in Mrs. Eddy's career, to her more discerning students, who resisted the personal sense of things, it became clear that it was God who was the source of Mrs. Eddy's spiritual rebukes.)

Mrs. Eddy's war with error and evil was to the death. But her critics and even some of her students saw it as a conflict with persons. Mrs. Eddy steadily grew in her ability to impersonalize error. She knew that the basis of Science is impersonality and she had to bring her older students along with her in this impersonalizing process. Her whole effort in Christian Science was to lift the individual out of a personal sense of things into the spiritual realm of the real where perfect freedom reigned as the unhampered operation of universal and impersonal law. Building on personality is building on sand. She often pointed to sacred history, saying that a St. Peter's or a St. Mary's religion is far from Christian Science carried out scientifically.

Love for Her Early Students

Sally: Mrs. Eddy's love and compassion toward her early students was without bounds, even though many proved faithless and even discredited her precepts because they misunderstood her teaching. Some were practicing contrary to her instructions. But in the end their negative response helped to further Mrs. Eddy's conviction of the wisdom of putting her system of Mind-healing into an incontrovertible form, a book which would speak for itself.

This early period was a trying one for Mrs. Eddy but she met it graciously and with good humor as seen from a letter preserved by Samuel Putnam Bancroft in Mrs. Eddy as I knew Her in 1870, p. 19: “I may as well jest over the absurd striplings who turn to rend me, to threaten me with disgrace and imprisonment for giving them a discovery that money cannot pay for, but a little good breeding might have helped at least to reward the toil, and scorn, and obscurity, by which it was won for them.”

Moderator: She taught her students that what they perceived mentally and spiritually they must establish humanly in order to complete their demonstration. Having listened for the divine will in heaven, in Mind, then they must make it their business to see that it was carried out in effect. “You are an unfaithful voice of God if you do not do it,” she said. In Mary Baker Eddy Her Spiritual Precepts, Mr. Carpenter, Sr. says that Mrs. Eddy was remarkable in this direction:I doubt if she ever failed to establish what God told her to establish in spite of the authority that she, herself, gave the Church. Through the sharp and stern nature of her rebukes, she built up almost a sense of fear in the minds of her students, and she did this deliberately so that when the time came that God told her to do something, she had the situation in hand so that she could execute it, in spite of numbers or of powerful opposition. Many times she stood alone against the whole membership, but she always won out. There is on record the time she went to Chicago for a month in 1888. Upon her return she found the church disrupted, and the books stolen by the opposition movement. Actually, this was a violent and far-reaching upheaval with nearly all of her highly-gifted writers and her more socially and financially-prosperous students defecting to form “Christian Science” organizations of their own, leaving Mrs. Eddy and her loyal students as only a small sect in a sea of other “Christian Science” organizations. But with God's guidance Mrs. Eddy soon had things under control again through the exercise of miraculous vision and divine wisdom. Yet, this showed what might happen without her direction.

Whenever Mrs. Eddy felt God was urging her to do something, she did it—she saw to it that it was accomplished. To carry it out was just as important to her as it was to hear God's direction in the first place. This is why she built up in the minds of those through whom she had to work, not only a great respect for her spiritual qualities, but a fear of disobedience, so that they would never question her ability to execute what God told her to execute.

Some day it will be seen that her rebukes were due to her efforts to keep the road open which would lead to the establishment of that which God told her to establish. There has never in the history of the world been anything like what she accomplished. She learned to keep students in such a relation to her that they could not possibly unite to obstruct what she put forth. When she went to Chicago, they showed what they might do if they had a chance. There would be no repetition of that.Actually, prior to her Chicago trip Mrs. Eddy had always treated her students as equals. They all had easy access to her, and she freely gave them all they could take, always. But her free unreserved mixing with them caused them to think she was no better than they were and this is also why they took her rebukes personally instead of being grateful for merited reproofs. She was dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices, bristling with animosities, and motivated by pride and vanity. The question “Who shall be greatest?” needed only her absence to rear its ugly head. After the Chicago experience, Mrs. Eddy moved swiftly toward becoming completely impersonal. Standing alone with God, Mrs. Eddy was always the victor over opposition in any and every direction.

Only her at-one-ment with God and her boundless spirit of universal love for all mankind can explain the invincible spirit of victory that pervaded and dominated her.

Continuing in Precepts Carpenter writes:If students of her life feel that she was unnecessarily severe [after the 1888 turmoil], that the letters she wrote to the Church and the Board of Directors were drastic at times,” they must realize that she knew that when God revealed to her a step to be taken, it was obligatory to have that step put into operation. Likewise she knew that nearly every advanced step that came from God would be fought, misunderstood, and the attempt would be made, by animal magnetism, to prevent it from being established or put into operation.It was an equal part of her obligation to God, Principle, to see that His directions went into effect and operation, without fear and without favor. It was necessary for her to keep a relation with those in authority that made them respect and obey her. Today, when she is no longer with us [Carpenter means no longer with us in person, for she is always with us when seen as the woman of the Apocalypse (My. 120:2)] students should retain a sense of her that acts as a spiritual monitor of each forward step. They can well take for their motto what she wrote in a letter to Julia Field-King, October 9,1896, “But remember, you must avoid the appearance of evil and do nothing that you would not be willing and glad for me to know. This rule kept will save you” (ibid).Mrs. Eddy's fidelity to the one Mind, her divine Principle, enabled her to rise above the most diabolical persecution and the cruel desertion of students whom she trusted.

The higher-caliber students who began coming to Mrs. Eddy in the late 1880's looked to her for the intuitive leadership and advice which was absolutely necessary for their work, and they received what she gave them in a grateful and reverential way. This better attitude enhanced their ever-deepening conviction that she was divinely inspired for the good of mankind in all she said and did. Instead of taking her rebukes personally, they were actually grateful for merited rebukes.

“What a travesty on the correct understanding of our Leader to interpret her rebukes as a bad disposition! What ignorance,” explains Carpenter, “to translate her efforts to keep the road open for God into an enjoyment of strife, misinterpreting what she so carefully established for the purpose of enabling her to execute what God told her to!” (ibid).

Anna: In substance, Mr. Carpenter states that time has shown us Mrs. Eddy functioned under a wisdom not her own. She kept her demonstration of divine Mind active and alive. She never deviated from her course except when she seemed to lose sight of it momentarily under the pressure of animal magnetism. At such times Mrs. Eddy would call her faithful students in the household to help her regain her spiritual standpoint and level of thought. But Mr. Carpenter admits it was her way of helping them to rise higher in the line of light. It encouraged the students greatly to feel they could actually be of help; she showed them how to work. She was no doubt helping them to regain their sense of her impersonal Leadership.

The steps Mrs. Eddy took in establishing the Christian Science movement, says Carpenter, were beyond the ken of the cleverest human mind. They were steps that departed from human procedure in ways no human being could have anticipated, or that no clever human mind would believe could possibly have ended successfully. The success of all she undertook was due solely to the integrity and consistency of her spiritual thought.

When Mrs. Eddy took a step on faith, her own human wisdom may have felt that it was an experiment that might not prove successful; yet, knowing the infallible wisdom supplied by God, Principle, Mrs. Eddy's spiritual sense knew that when orders came from on high, the results must prove the wisdom of these orders. This unswerving obedience to divine directives saved her “retracing and traversing anew the path from sin to holiness” (20:22).

Moderator: Mr. Carpenter greatly loved and revered Mary Baker Eddy, and at times in his writing he may seem to give the impression that Mrs. Eddy was “closer to God” than the rest of us. Such believing or teaching would be priestcraft; but this, of course, was never his intention. Having lived in Mrs. Eddy's home for a year, he simply stood in awe before her ability to practise what she taught. And personally witnessing this engendered the most profound respect and admiration, much as the disciples must have felt when they saw Jesus call Lazarus forth from the tomb. Mr. Carpenter witnessed how Mrs. Eddy was calling the whole world from its tomb, from its belief of being buried in matter, and from the pain and agony accompanying that belief.

The many sharp rebukes Mrs. Eddy administered to Mr. Carpenter, that is, to the error he was expressing at the moment, and to others in the home, made him well aware that Mrs. Eddy meant business when she commanded, “Follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ.” Personal worship was anathema to Mrs. Eddy. She taught that each one of us has equal access to God, Principle—“Love—impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals” (13:2).

SELF-ASSERTION OVERRULED BY LOVE

Bill: I would say then that the requirements for practicing this Science are not superficial, but must reach to the depths of one's nature, and effect the final destruction of all that is not Christian. All that is not based on divine Principle must be driven out.

The first necessity is honesty, absolute integrity of thought. There are two ways we must know ourselves. We must be able to recognize our faults, weaknesses, and sins. We must also comprehend in some degree the actuality of our true being as the perfect expression of divine Mind. This will enable us to overcome human weaknesses and replace them with Godlike qualities. But it can't be done by “wishing” it would be.

We must gain dominion over our beliefs through the activities of good, and the rooting out of all thoughts of self-aggrandizement. Christian Science destroys all sense of personal animosity in those who adhere to what it teaches. It destroys all sense of self justification and recrimination, all sense of self-assertion that would use intimidation to maintain a position of superiority over others. In Henry Drummond's masterpiece, The Greatest Thing in the World, he analyzes Love according to St. Paul's nine ingredients. He interprets “Love envieth not,” as generosity. This applies to love in competition with others, in regard to which he says:Whenever you attempt a good work you will find [others] doing the same kind of work .... Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian feeling. That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy—the large, rich, generous soul which “envieth not,” [for “envy is the atmosphere of hell” ('02.3:28).]

Grace: Mrs. Eddy was fully aware of “the rocks and sirens” that lie in a student's course, and cause so many wrecks. These rocks and sirens, she warned, were rivalry, jealousy, envy, revenge—the self-asserting mortal will-power. (Mis.28) “ . . Dishonesty in trusts begins with 'Who shall be greatest?' “ ('02.4:2).

Florence: It seems that one of the worst foes to harmony is the vexing question, “Who shall be greatest?” Everybody wants to be somebody. Many crave the personal homage that being “the best and most sought after” gives them. But yielding to the desire to be “the greatest,” puts them on the crest of a billow rushing to destruction. Personal praise weighs nothing in God's scale, and it hangs as a millstone about the neck of him who does not receive it in the spirit of total selflessness. I think one reason why both Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy reached the pinacle of success in their careers could be traced to the fact that both were utterly oblivious of human self. At this point in time we still have to work together and try to accomplish the greatest good to the greatest number, and organization is good when it means simply a matter of doing things by working together in a selfless manner. Paul counsels, “ . . . if [there be] any fellowship of the Spirit ... let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem the other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. 2:1-4).

In Miscellaneous Writings (138) Mrs. Eddy counsels her students to seek, alone, the guidance of the divine Mind, the divine Principle which we claim to demonstrate—to work out individually and alone, for themselves and for others, the sublime ends of human life. In order to do this they must give much time to self examination, the control of appetite, passion, pride, envy, evil-speaking, resentment and all the innumerable errors that infest human thinking. “Remember, “ she admonishes, “that the first and last lesson of Christian Science is love, perfect love, and love made perfect through the cross.”

Moderator: And if Love alone is Life, as Mrs. Eddy says (Mis. 388:10), then we are not really living if we are not loving. “The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love” (322:26).

Every experience we have is nudging us toward inescapable union and oneness with Love, and we can never turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what dwelleth in the eternal Mind [which is Love alone]” (Un. 64:17). We are all moving toward the achievement of perfect love in thought and deed. It depends only upon the expansion and the exaltation of our thought—“the time for thinkers has come.” We must keep our thought reaching out and always taking on a larger dimension, continually attaining more of Love. Let Love do it. Keep declaring for the things you want to come to pass, and let your whole desire be for more Love—a better understanding of divine Love.

Marie: The Christ is the true idea of God. This idea is always as present as God. Light always has its reflections. Where there is no reflection there is no light. When one does not express the reflection one is not expressing God, Love. When we have an understanding of Love, health and peace is established.

SESSION VI: MORE HIGHLIGHTS
IN THE EARLY HISTORY

Moderator: Today let's take an hour or two to look further at the early days when Mrs. Eddy was still searching for students who would be loyal to Christian Science. First, let's look at Julia Bartlett:

JULIA BARTLETT

Julia Bartlett, who had been a hopeless invalid for seven years and endured great suffering, was healed through Christian Science treatment in 1880. By 1882 she had the sad but glorious distinction of being the “oldest loyal student of Christian Science in the whole world” because every other student had fallen away or become disloyal. When Mrs. Eddy saw this eventuality looming, she asked Julia, “And will you leave me also?” But Julia did not. After taking class instruction from Mrs. Eddy she became a dynamic spiritual healer and teacher of Christian Science and remained faithful and true.

Speaking of the early days, Julia says, “Mrs. Eddy made known to her students the needs of the hour, and the snares and pitfalls that lay in our path in our warfare against error, and how to avoid them. Happy was the student who obeyed her instructions, for in obedience to her teachings and commands was his salvation, and through disobedience many lost their way. They were not ready to recognize the error that was blinding them and to yield up their material views—love of self and worldly ambition—and follow the leadings of divine Mind. Instead they followed their own selfish inclinations and became persecutors of Truth and of their great teacher. This was her experience,” says Julia, “with many with whom she had labored long and patiently in the early days of Christian Science. Others were not watchful, and wandered back into their old material thought and ways.”

Healings in New Hampshire

Johnny: From the record we can see Julia avoided these pitfalls:

“About March 1, 1884,” she tells in her reminiscences, “a young woman whom physicians were not able to heal was sent to me for treatment in Christian Science by a physician in New Hampshire who was attending her case. In nine days she returned to him perfectly well, and remained in his house two weeks. When this physician and those who knew the woman saw what Christian Science had done for her, a great interest was aroused among them. They had no understanding of the Science, but many chronic invalids and others who needed help were desirous for the treatment and wished me to go to that place and take their cases.”

Julia had her hands full at the College in Boston where Mrs. Eddy conducted classes, but finally consented to go to New Hampshire for one week. She relates:... I found these people very ready to do what was asked of them, and the hall was well filled the two evenings I spoke to them. [Everyone present subscribed to the newly born Christian Science Journal, which meant quite a large number of subscriptions were taken.]

When that was finished people crowded about making appointments for the next day until every minute of the day was spoken for. When the time came they were there promptly, beginning early in the morning and continuing through the day until late at night, with a room filled with people waiting perhaps two or three hours before they could be seen.

I was staying at the home of the one who had been my patient and was healed, and whose case it was that led the physician above mentioned to think favorably of this method of treatment. She made herself very useful in receiving those who came, and her time was fully taken in this way. I was seeing and treating seventy patients a day; my work taking me far into the night; and although I could give each one but a few minutes of my time, most of them were healed quickly. I had much sympathy for the large number who came from the surrounding towns begging that I take their cases, whom I had not the time to even see. I then sent a telegram to Boston for help, but could find no one to come. I took little time to eat or sleep. My one desire was to do the best and all I could for those dear people during my short stay with them, and God wonderfully blessed my efforts. [She stayed there eleven days.] Christian Science was the one topic of conversation in town and on the outbound trains. Much antagonism was expressed by certain clergymen and M.D.'s when their people and patients rejoiced in the proof of the great healing power of Truth and trusted in it for their help. On one occasion a gentleman whose wife and daughter were being benefited by the treatment, was met by his minister who bitterly denounced Christian Science and among other things said it was the work of the devil. The gentleman replied, “if it is the work of the devil, then I only wish there were more devils and fewer ministers.” The minister took the rebuke graciously.

Many who became interested in Christian Science at that time later were teachers and healers themselves, going out into different cities and filling responsible positions” (Julia Bartlett, Miscellaneous Documents, pp. 194-195).

Bill: It was this marvelous healing work Mrs. Eddy and her students performed that launched Christian Science on its global mission, and within a few decades there was hardly a city, village, or hamlet in which Christian Science had not been heard of or in which there were not to be found living witnesses and monuments to the virtue and power of Truth, as applied through this Christian system of healing disease and discord.

Kathleen: After Julia had given this amazing proof of the Christ Science to heal, the young woman whom she had originally healed went to Vermont to the home of her parents, where her many friends who had known her condition felt a miracle had been performed.Julia reports:The result was an urgent call to go there. I wrote them I would give an informal parlor talk in the evening.

Arriving at the time appointed, I was met by the young woman who said there were so many who wanted to hear about Christian Science that I was to speak in a church. She little knew what that meant to me. I was wholly unprepared to address such a body of people from the platform, having given no special thought as to what I should say as I expected to meet only a comparatively small number in a private home.

When we reached the church and I saw a well-filled house, my courage almost failed me. Then I thought, “This is God's work and He will take of care of it,” and took my place fearlessly, addressing the audience with no difficulty.

Many believed; and several were healed. One, an extreme case of double curvature of the spine, heart disease, and other troubles—whom the doctors had given but a short time to live—was instantaneously healed and soon after had class instruction, and has been a successful worker in Christian Science.During Julia's explanation this man had obviously seen that “God could not make imperfect man, His model infinite; unhallowed thought he could not plan; Love's work and Love must fit. Life, Truth, and Love the pattern make; Christ is the perfect heir; the clouds of sense roll back, and show the form divinely fair” (Mary Alice Dayton).

Another healing was a case of an accident from which the man had long been a sufferer. He had come expecting to oppose all that was said. After listening he not only believed, but was healed. A good number of patients came for treatment in this place, and many subscriptions were given for the Christian Science Journal.

With so little healing work being done today, we should remember it was permanent and instantaneous healing that Mrs. Eddy encouraged in her students. It was healing work of this caliber that was responsible for the phenomenal growth of Christian Science during Mrs. Eddy's sojourn on earth. The great momentum Mrs. Eddy built up continued this phenomenal growth for several decades after her departure.

Mrs. Eddy learned many valuable lessons during the first sixteen years of teaching when many had gone forth to do miraculous healing work only to succumb to the pressures exerted on them by persecution, financial difficulties, or character weaknesses.

Testing of Julia

Error worked in subtle ways to deprive Mrs. Eddy of promising students. We might use Julia's experience as an example of this manipulation, remembering that her experience was also the experience of countless others who became dedicated workers. In the early days Mrs. Eddy had to do her work, almost exclusively, among the poor and lowly. It was many years before she attracted the wealthy and influential.

Mrs. Eddy's students who went into the practise had to depend upon the income from their healing work for their daily supply. Julia relates that there were many uses for the little cash they had. At first the greater part of her time was given to work for the Christian Science College and other projects that brought no material remuneration. This work, she says, she considered a privilege. She took a few patients and had good success in healing, and that supplied her with necessary funds

... until all at once not one came to be healed. I understood the cause of this [she knew it was aggressive mental suggestion trying to rob Mrs. Eddy of a valuable helper] and worked assiduously to overcome the error by realizing God's government and that He is the source of supply ... yet with no apparent result. To be sure, I had all I could do with work for the Cause, but my little practise which had met my daily needs was taken from me, To reduce expenses I then began to take my meals out and to reduce the supply as well, and for the first time I knew what it was to suffer from hunger day after day. It was at this point—when starvation stared them in the face—that many otherwise faithful and promising students, of lesser metal, deserted. I did not trouble dear Mrs. Eddy or anyone with the extreme conditions so far as I could hide them. It was my problem to solve. I finally thought relief must come soon if I was to remain in the College, and taking my Bible for my guidance, I opened to these words: “Thou shalt remain in this house.” It was no longer a question with me. I must and could work it out. Then one day patients began to come. The attempt to take me away and deprive Mrs. Eddy of the help she needed had failed and I had no more trouble that way, and she said I never would. (Miscellaneous Documents, p. 187).

Mrs. Eddy in Tremont Temple

Anna: Before we leave Julia's reminiscences, I would like to include her first-hand account of Mrs. Eddy's couragous answer to certain ministers. Mrs. Eddy was continually assailed from the pulpit. In one way she almost welcomed these assaults if she were given an opportunity to answer the slanderous charges made against Christian Science because it gave her an opportunity to explain what Christian Science was as well as what it was not.

When the Reverend Stacy Fowler vilified Mrs. Eddy from his pulpit, she replied by offering free courses in the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to all clergymen who cared to come. She explained the purpose of the offer was “to facilitate an honest investigation of Christian Science.”

But the Boston ministers, instead of accepting, increased their denunciations, assailing her with teaching “free love,” spiritualism, denying the efficacy of prayer, denying the punishment of sin, etc. Mrs. Eddy in her little eight-page Journal, issued every other month, did her best to answer the attacks from the pulpit and from such biggies as the well-established Zion's Herald, the Watchman, and the Congregationalist, all published in Boston.

On February 26, 1885, the Reverend A.J. Gordon in league with the Reverend Joseph Cook, made a particularly vitriolic attack upon Mrs. Eddy, denouncing Christian Science and all its works with a thoroughness characteristic of those early days.

A number of Mrs. Eddy's students urged her to bring suit for slander. She responded by writing for the Journal her essay entitled “Love,” and her pamphlet entitled Defense of Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy did, however, immediately demand the right to reply from the same platform. Her request was at first refused.

Later she was reluctantly granted ten minutes on March 16th. It was stated in the Congregationalist that “the best way of meeting the evil [Mrs. Eddy and her works] was to let it show itself.”

It has been said of Mrs. Eddy that as a teacher she had in a marked degree the ability to arrest attention even before she began to speak. Many taught by her have left the record that the first session of a class was in the nature of a revelation to those attending it. Intuitively the members of a class rose at her entrance. Her teaching did not leave them where it found them. It influenced their entire lives.

On the larger platform she seems to have been even more arresting. Mrs. Eddy is described as having a remarkable poise and lack of self-consciousness. At this time Hawthorne Hall had been outgrown and Mrs. Eddy was preaching in the much larger Chickering Hall. Now, to answer the villainous charges of the Reverends Cook and Gordon, Mrs. Eddy was to appear in the prestigious Tremont Temple to explain Christian Science in the ten minutes grudgingly alloted her. Nineteen hundred years earlier Jesus had faced the defiant and proscriptive orthodoxy of his time. Since his time a succession of martyrs had been burned at the stake, fed to the lions, thrown into boiling oil, put to the rack, and otherwise tortured because they dared to defy priestcraft and refused to give the lie to their honest convictions.

Mrs. Eddy felt deeply the burden of the world's lack of comprehension. It took tremendous courage to appear at Tremont Temple and face the two thousand grim Christians who awaited her and her “heresy.” Her teaching had been damned by Reverends Cook and Gordon as dangerous pantheistic heterodoxy. The people had been warned against her teachings. She was looked upon as a representative of Satan and a tool for evil.

Julia Bartlett in her reminiscences recalls: “it was a hard ordeal for her—to encounter this hatred and antagonism toward Truth. When the time came I rode in the carriage with her to the temple. When we reached it, we were met by Joseph Cook who was very abusive and insulting in his remarks to her, but she made no reply and took her place on the platform.” His introduction was icy.

The house was filled when she rose to speak. The time was short.

In exactly ten minutes Mrs. Eddy gave an explanation or exposition of her teaching which has since become historic. With rare skill she confined herself solely to questions and answers which in themselves were remarkable in their implications. They answered the topics most under consideration and discussion at her time.

When she came to the crux of the whole matter: “How is the healing done in Christian Science?” She paused. Tremont Temple was filled to overflowing. Many were standing at the back of the great gallery which circles the hall. It is not difficult to imagine the wave of expectancy experienced by the audience.

“This answer,” Mrs. Eddy said, “includes too much to give you any conclusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name some means by which it is not done . .. “ (Mis. 96:25).

As she came to her last question, “is there a personal man?” her time was running out, but her answer was wonderful in its comforting assurance. It inferred that while man in God's image and likeness did not yet appear, it would appear more and more as the perfect model was held in thought, held in mind, and man turned resolutely “away from inharmony, sickness, and sin to that which is the image of his Maker” (Mis. 98:4).

“Her work was completed,” says Julia Bartlett. “She stopped at the end of the time alloted her, although she had not consulted her watch.

“As we were leaving I heard someone say, 'She is a wonderful woman.' “ They rode home in silence. Julia saw she must be left to herself, and that her help came from a higher than human source. When they reached home, Mrs. Eddy went to her room where she remained alone.

To thinking Christian Scientists, Mrs. Eddy is in no way more vivid in her claim to grandeur than in the way she rode the storms. This was not the first storm, and it would by no means be the last.

Julia longed to comfort her teacher: “I thought if I could only have shared some of the burdens how gladly I would have done it, and if the world only understood, these trials would not have been put upon her. No one but herself could know the burdens of that hour” (Misc. Documents, p. 198).

Never, never will a mortal again drink the cup Mrs. Eddy drank to the dregs in order to bless mankind. What she said of Jesus, was true of her: Through the magnitude of her human life, she demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of her pure affection, she defined Love. With the affluence of Truth she vanquished error. At that period the world acknowledged not her righteousness but it was beginning to receive the harmony her glorified teachings introduced. The leaven of Truth she founded in human consciousness is ever at work; it will destroy all error and be glorified in man's spiritual freedom.

Rocky: To hasten this happy day Mrs. Eddy warned her students against the subtle influences that would impel them to leave their post. She also taught them that Christ's way was the only way, that divine Love would destroy all evil (because to Love there is no evil—Love knows no evil).

From the human standpoint, mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface. It often follows the explanation of Truth, when evil seems to be aggravated before its destruction. But in reality nothing is going on except Truth which is always encompassed in Love. This must be so because of the Allness of God, and the nothingness of evil. All error (evil) is hypnotic suggestion, and induces belief in what has no substance.

SCENES FROM LYMAN JOHNSON'S EARLY HISTORY

Moderator: Before we leave this glimpse of the early students who remained loyal to Christian Science, we should look at Lyman Johnson's History of the Christian Science Movement. Lyman's History again shows how Christian Science made its entry among the lowly and inconspicuous. As the ages pass, this leaven of Truth is at work deep in human consciousness. It will destroy the entire mass of error, freeing man from bondage to matter and materiality.

As time goes on, Christian Scientists will want to know about the early workers—the varied trials and testing experiences through which they passed, and what they accomplished under the guidance of Mrs. Eddy. At such a time, Lyman Johnson's History of the Christian Science Movement is destined to become ever more and more sought after because it gives firsthand reminiscences.

Lyman, then a teenager, was an eyewitness to much of what the movement passed through—the adversities, the poverty, the cold and hunger, the mental suffering caused by ostracism, and by the hostility of pulpit, press and M.D.'s, the betrayal and treachery of renegade students. Naively, nostalgically, he evokes a feeling that “the ties which link the happy may be dear, but those which bind the wretched are tenderness unutterable.”

His History recalls the atmosphere of primitive Christianity. With poignant clarity he depicts the faithful little group that surrounded Mrs. Eddy in the eighteen eighties. He pictures the storm, the struggle, the persecution, along with the radiant assurances of being newly born of the Spirit and of the boundless possibilities. These experiences of a hundred years ago were unique, never to be repeated. They simply awalt, says Lyman Johnson, grateful and sympathetic appreciation.

Wm. B. Johnson: C. S. Practitioner

Lyman's father and mother, the William B. Johnsons, were both healed in Christian Science in 1882, and delivered from so much misery that they had a great desire to become purer and holier. Mrs. Eddy soon realized the grand quality of William B. Johnson's thought and urged him to go into the practise: “You have but little to unlearn,” she told him, “and your healing and study have made you ready.” Thus encouraged, Lyman's father immediately gave up his business and put a sign in his window:

William B. Johnson
Christian Scientist

The sign in the window struck the neighbors as a nine days' wonder, attracting many queer glances, sarcastic remarks, and gibes, but no patients. And with these trials, relates Lyman, came a greater hardship, lack of funds. Lyman, age fourteen, had worked all summer and was bringing in $2.50 a week, on which the family lived. The father's time was fully occupied helping Mrs. Eddy, but at unremunerative Church-related activities. A week before high school opened, Lyman's father came to him with tears in his eyes and put the question whether or not he should give up Christian Science practise and go back into his old line of work. Or would Lyman be willing to give up attending high school, at least temporarily, and keep on with his job in order to support the family?

Lyman kept his job. He says, “I do not like to write very much about the years 1884 to 1887 because they record a constant struggle for existence.... These were indeed heart-breaking years, for there was no income for weeks at a time except what came through my work.”

Lyman's History at this point shows how severely these early pioneers of the Christ Science were tested. He saw his mother often worried and sad. He learned what it was to go to bed hungry, or to have only a small bowl of stewed tomatoes and a few crackers for supper after a hard day's work. Books, jewelry, engravings, even their furniture, were sold to pay the rent. He writes that even after the lapse of many years he tries to avoid opening the gates of memory—the adversities of his father and mother, the quiet desperation, the silent tears. “Their troubles were greater than mine,” he writes, “for I had the years before me, but even now I feel that the trials and labors of those years with the pinch of poverty, and the constant struggle against the efforts to pervert Mrs. Eddy's teachings—which caused father untold labor—have all left their mark in a deep-rooted sadness, which I still must make effort to escape from.”

Lyman's Meeting with Mrs. Eddy

Tommy: It was in 1884 that Lyman first saw Mrs. Eddy and heard her preach in the Hawthorne Rooms. His account of this meeting, reflecting a child's point of view and reaction, is most interesting. His father had told him much about Mrs. Eddy: what she had done, the wonderful things she had written, and what healing she had accomplished. While young Lyman was willing to look at her, he shrank from going too close because, he said, “I had a childish awe of such a wonderful person. Before the service began the room was well filled, and I was startled out of a reverie by hearing people whisper, 'Here is Mrs. Eddy.' I know that I got to my feet, for I remember that my father gently pulled me back and told me not to stand up and stare.”

At the end of the service his father, having business to discuss with some of the members, left Lyman to look out at the Common. After waiting some time his father came for him as he wanted Lyman to meet Mrs. Eddy. “I know that I held back, as there were some who were waiting to speak to her, but father gently chided me and told me that I must meet her because she was 'the greatest person on earth.'” This was almost too much for young Lyman as he couldn't see how she could be greater than the President of the United States. However, his father kept urging him forward, and he stood among a little group of about a dozen persons who were lingering about her

....suddenly she realized that there was a child near her, and at that moment father pushed me forward, and said, 'Teacher, this is my son.' She was very gracious to me, took my hand and held it. At the clasp of her hand my fears vanished. She then told me that my father had told her about my singing and said that she would like to hear me sing sometime…She asked me what I would like to be when I grew up. I told her, 'A fine musician.’ Her answer was, ‘l hope you will be,' and looking me in the eyes, and putting her hand on my head, she said, 'May God bless you.’

The sweetness of her voice, the wonderful questioning of her eyes which seemed to read my thoughts, rather frightened me at first, then drew my tears. The remarkable manner in which she spoke to others, and the way she stood, made a picture that I have never forgotten, and in after years whenever I had the pleasure of seeing her, the picture of that day at Hawthorne Rooms came back with inspiring freshness.

This first impression has always lingered with me as one of the events of my life. When in later years I realized the greatness of the woman, I had no desire to see her personally, though I had many opportunities to go to Concord, for that one touch of her hand and the blessing given seemed to have sealed up in my child's memory for future guidance a reverence and a love so great, that through all the years I have been relieved of all need of seeing, that I might believe” (ibid. p. 7).

Sally: His whole History elicits a deep sympathy and admiration for the valiant efforts of those early struggling pioneers, their steadfastness and courage in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, their cheerfulness, their overriding desire to help in any way possible. Time and energy were not considered when they were expended for the Cause. Everyone was willing and ready to do his part no matter how humble. The break in the church (with forty disloyal members apostatizing) had brought the loyal workers and adherents closer together. With great love and reverence for their Leader, Mrs. Eddy, they instinctively put more vitality into their action and thought, and worked with more definite aspirations. Their great joy was always in doing something helpful, and there was no thought of recompense. Mrs. Eddy was among them, and those who through the years of trial had never wavered in knowing that she was giving them the truth Jesus had taught, felt that every hour near her was precious, that fulfilment of her wishes was a help both to her and to the world.

Friday Night Suppers at the Restaurant

Marie: The spirit and tenor of the lives of these early workers, touched and hallowed by the fire of a great vision, is further charmingly portrayed in Lyman's description of suppers before the Friday night church meetings at a near-by old-fashioned restaurant on Tremont Street. There would be a few workers in the office of the Journal, who lived too far away to go home for the evening meal, together with practitioners from the suburbs, who came in town especially for the evening service. All would meet friends and relatives at this restaurant that “was long and narrow, running through to Tamworth street; always well-lighted, and always neat.”

... It had about it an air of comfort, and here came Miss Bartlett, Mr. and Mrs. Munroe, Mrs. Coleman, Mrs. Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Landy, Captain and Mrs. Eastaman, Mr. Mason, Mr. Bailey, father, mother, and myself. Miss Bartlett and the Munroes usually made up a table with us, and sometimes Mr. Mason would join in pleasant comradeship. Here, over a simple meal, the work that was laid out for the coming week and the experiences of each since they had last met would be talked over. A review of what the Teacher had said to them at the College would follow, or the result of a meeting held for some special purpose; then questions on the interpretation of passages of Scripture and of Science and Health. This hour of the evening meal was filled with wonderful sweetness. There was a free and generous exchange of thought, a simple association which bore the fruits of faithfulness and unity, while there was always a pervading perfume, since someone had seen Mrs. Eddy yesterday or today, and the few words which she had spoken opened new vistas of the truth that they must seek for and find.

“There was no idolatry among these early Scientists. They were not sentimentalists for they had been tried in the fires of struggle and the battles for right. They were middle-aged people who had learned much of the world before coming into Science, and the quiet and reverent way in which they referred to the Teacher, their gentleness, and their ever-present love, spoke the impress which the spirit of Mrs. Eddy made, a spirit which was ever with us at our meal. If things got too serious, Mr. Munroe, who was a bit of a wag, was sure to bring everybody back to a cheerful state by saying some funny thing that did not fail to make us all smile. Then father, who was very exacting in this regard, would invariably take out his watch and say, “Friends, it's time to be on duty and welcome friends and strangers,” and so would end the evening meal, a prelude of serious thought and uplifting hope for the work [week] to come.

I remember these evenings as though they were of yesterday. They made a deep impression on me, so distinctive was the contrast between this hour of peace and the day's labors which I had finished. None there had large possessions in stocks, bonds, or business. Their daily remuneration was from God, and they gave generously to the support of the [various church activities]. Many patients were visited and treated without charge....

With these people Christian Science was their all in all, for there were few that had not been brought out of great tribulation by it. They had made sacrifices, had been maligned, scorned and laughed at; attempts had been made to undermine not only their individual work but that of the whole Cause; and they had gone from door to door canvassing for subscriptions for the Journal. These seven-times tried workers carried with them an omnipresent faith in their Teacher. They were constantly inspired by her presence and by her word. (ibid. p. 80)The Science of being was developing latent abilities and possibilities, lifting people above their ordinary capacities, making them instruments of a movement which within a few decades was to girdle the globe.

Reasons for the Phenomenal Success

Rookie: What do you think accounted for the phenomenal success of the movement after Mrs. Eddy finally was able to attract faithful students like Julia Bartlett and William B. Johnson and the many other stalwarts who joined the ranks in the latter half of the eighteen eighties?

Moderator: That is a very good question, Rookie. Up until 1894 not a single church edifice existed. The Scientists met in halls and in individual homes with the exception of a tiny structure in Oconto. In spite of the fact that there were no churches, however, the denomination grew tremendously. In 1893 Christian Science was given a leading role when the prestigious Parliament of Religions, involving every religion on earth, met in Chicago. Christian Science didn't grow because of churches being built. What then was it that attracted such great numbers? It was Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of Love—her love for all mankind, her universal sense of love—that acted like a great magnetic force. With simplicity and great fidelity she ministered to the spiritual needs of all who placed themselves under her care. She continually led them forward into the divine order through the power of her own perfect understanding, as put forth in her written Word, as well as in her oral teaching.

In Lyman's History, page 228, he gives insight that also helps to answer the question of why the Christian Science movement grew so rapidly under Mary Baker Eddy's wise and God-inspired guidance:

After reasoning that it certainly wasn't because of any church building activity, he asks:What then had been the reason for the dignified, never fearing, and always hopeful attitude of Christian Scientists individually and collectively?

It was the constant training and idealization of their thought; the constant growth in mental poise and strength; the application of Christian Science to daily problems and the successful working out of these problems; the continuous and unquestionable regeneration of hopeless human beings in the matter of health, strength, and moral status; the more spiritual interpretation of the works and words of Jesus; and lastly the manifestation of gratitude, love, and full-hearted willingness to sacrifice for the upbuilding of the Cause of Christian Science and the realization of the ideals and hopes of their Teacher and Leader, Mrs. Eddy.Because of Mrs. Eddy's conviction of the oneness of God and man, namely, of Principle and its idea, she set aside many hours each day for prayer, to bring about world-wide understanding of this fact.

These hours spent in prayer assured the many spectacular and instantaneous healings which attracted so much attention to Christian Science and daily added to its ranks. The momentum built up by Mrs. Eddy carried the movement miraculously forward for more than three decades after her departure. One has only to compare the growth of the Christian Science movement under Mrs. Eddy's hallowed leadership with what has developed since she left the scene, to realize how close was her union with God, and how faithfully she let the Mind of Christ be Mind to her.

Her holy humility, her unworldliness and self-effacement, her unremitting toil and efforts on behalf of the students, quickened and energized them. They felt the sublimity and power of her thought that was always one with God. It inspired their confidence, caused the healings to multiply, and the movement to grow and encircle the globe.

SESSION VII: SOME ENEMIES OF OUR CAUSE

Moderator: In learning “the system that she [Mrs. Eddy] denominated Christian Science” (viii:27) which imparts the Golden Rule and the two great Commandments of Christ Jesus (Matt. 22:37-39) we are learning our God-being. We are exchanging a mortal consciousness for a spiritual divinely scientific consciousness. A mortal material consciousness is really our only enemy.

“Christian Science,” Mrs. Eddy said, “is my only ideal; and the individual and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunderstood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadow cast by that error” (Mis. 105:20).

God the Mind of Man

This means that if we look for Mary Baker Eddy in the flesh we lose her instead of find her. Mrs. Eddy's Mind was God, just as our Mind is God when we understand God as Mary Baker Eddy understood God. Not understanding God is our only enemy.

Mary Baker Eddy is Christ-Mary. In Baker Notes, Dr. Baker recorded Mrs. Eddy's statement: “The Christ-Mary is higher than Christ Jesus because Christ-Mary had to give birth to the Christ idea, and keep it perfect.” In Mrs. Eddy's illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas, the ninth picture shows a woman with a scroll, marked Christian Science, in her hand. She is holding the hand of Jesus. Circling the head of each is a halo. The halo over the woman's head seems to be slightly larger.

This illustration caused quite an uproar among clergymen, and sharp criticism was leveled at Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy was prompted to respond in the Christian Science Journal, February, 1894: “All clergymen may not understand the illustrations in Christ and Christmas; or that these refer not to personality, but present the type and shadow of Truth's appearing in the womanhood as well as in the manhood of God, our divine Father and Mother.” (See also Mis. 32:31.)

To the Christian Scientists whose eyes have been partly opened to Jesus' mission as exemplified in Christian Science today, the pictures in Christ and Christmas must be a new revelation of the God-anointed mission of our Leader. Mrs. Eddy has opened a door “and no man can shut it”—she has opened the door to the eternal life of idea, where nothing is left but the “womanhood and manhood of God” (Mis. 33:10).

In As It Is, p. 52, Alice Orgain states: “There never was and never will be but one man, and that is Jesus' revelation of manhood and his identity therewith; there never was and never will be but one Woman, and that is Mary Baker Eddy's revelation of womanhood, and her identity therewith. (My. 120:2).”

In our study we are seeing that Jesus was not understood until Woman, appearing to mortals as Mary Baker Eddy, scientifically brought forth his consciousness as her “man child” in ful-filment of his prophecy to St. John in Revelation (12:5): “And she brought forth a man child [as Truth], who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.” Science and Health is the consciousness, the mentality, of Christ Jesus—“the kingdom of God within you.”

What is this “rod of iron”?

Anna: It is uncompromising and inflexible Principle. “Science,” Mrs. Eddy says, “makes no concessions to persons or opinions” (456:17).

Moderator: In this respect, does Science differ from Christianity in any way?

Bill: Yes, one of the major virtues of Christianity in Jesus' first coming was its concessionary spirit in the name of love, particularly expressed in such language as, “Suffer it to be so now [for the sake of others].” This is what he said at the time he was baptized by John. He voluntarily took on the belief of being a mortal for the sake of others. And his “suffer-it-to-be-so-now” concession directly precipitated all his suffering: “Immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness” to be tempted by Satan. (Mark 1:12, 13) Jesus allowed the dream of mortal life to overtake him so that he could be the wayshower for humanity and show the way out of the flesh—to show that in reality, we are “incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth and Love.”

The Lodestar of Christianity

Margie: Jesus never lost sight of the fact that the whole of mortal life is a dream; he therefore knew that crucifying his flesh would accomplish nothing for his enemies. What would lose the vitality of the cause he championed was false theology's denial of his relationship with God, separating him from his teaching and from his place in Bible prophecy—in other words, moving him out of Christianity. Not seeing Mary Baker Eddy's relationship with God, separating her from her teaching and from her place in Bible prophecy is also the great danger facing Christian Science.

The crucifixion of Jesus was not the great danger to Christianity; it forced on him the resurrection, a demonstration that became the lodestar of Christianity. It was not the crucifixion but the attempt to kill his influence that was the real criminal act. Jesus said, “Fear not them which kill the body.... but rather fear him which is able to kill both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The only thing we need to fear is the nagging, whispering doubt that we haven't what it takes to surmount a problem—that we haven't the Mind of Christ that can do all things perfectly.

Mrs. Eddy knew that the one Mind, the Mind of Christ, was her Mind. Therefore the malpractitioners who dogged her steps and tried to put her through a slow crucifixion, only served to spur her on to higher attainments in the line of spiritual light, thus more clearly exposing the nothingness of error and evil, as well as serving to unite the Cause more closely and establish it on a higher and more spiritual plane.

A real enemy of the Cause is the human mind that uses ambitious students within the ranks to endeavor, through conservatism and intellectuality, or other means, to move our Leader out of her place. It evinces a lack of love and gratitude and takes the heart and soul out of Christian Science, making it a dead body.

Christian Science a Science Not a Religion

Anna: One of the greatest enemies of all has been the attempt on the part of “the rulers of the church” to project Christian Science to the public as a religion instead of as a Science. Animal magnetism does not war against persons, but against the development of the idea.

The great revelation that came to Mrs. Eddy in 1866 was a Science, the Christ Science. It was not a religion. Religion comes from two root words, namely, re and ligeo. Re means again, and ligeo is the root from which the word ligaments comes. So it means to bind back, or to tie again. Mrs. Eddy's revelation was that in reality man has never left God. She perceived that, in Science, existence separate from divinity is an impossibility, and therefore man doesn't need religion to tie him back to God. In reality, man never left perfection. We only need to get rid of illusions, false beliefs, mortal mind's point of view that sees limitation everywhere instead of seeing God's infinite perfect universe just at hand. The real enemy is the concept of life as finite. Animal magnetism doesn't want us to find out that we live in a universe of infinite flawless perfection.

Elsie: But didn't Mrs. Eddy form a church?

Moderator: Yes, as a suffer it to be so now, a necessity for the time, but her estoppel clauses in the Manual completely dismantled The Mother Church as a central material organization when she was no longer present. While she was here she needed the help of a Board of Directors to promulgate her message and bear the burden of the vast amount of work involved in implementing and executing the perpetual revelations coming to her from God. When she was no longer here in person, the Board of five Directors was supposed to revert to a Board of four and their duties were to become only those specified in the “Deed of Trust,” as shown on pages 128 to 135 of the Church Manual of The First Church of Christ Scientist, in Boston, Mass., of which she put out eighty-eight editions. The eighty-ninth edition was not put out by her. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to go into this Church subject more fully in a later Session.

Tina: Also, wasn't The Mother Church regarded as a symbol for the mortal body that must gradually be put off?

Anna: Yes, it was. In Retrospection, p. 45, Mrs. Eddy says organization is requisite only in the earliest periods in Christian history [but totally unnecessary in Christian Science history]. “After this material form of cohesion and fellowship has accomplished its end, continued organization retards spiritual growth, and should be laid off-even as the corporeal organization deemed requisite in the first stages of mortal existence is finally laid off in order to gain spiritual freedom and supremacy.”

Florence: Mrs. Eddy was using The Mother Church as a symbol for the mortal body that must be laid off and replaced with “the system she denominated Christian Science” (viii:27). The warfare which The Mother Church symbolized was concerned with the laying down of the mortal. The estoppel clauses are a symbol of the estopping of the mortal viewpoint—the Adam-dream viewpoint that encumbers us with a fleshly mortal body. Perhaps in a later Session this point can be covered more adequately.

Billy: What will replace the mortal body?

Florence: Divine Science will replace the mortal body which is only an image in mortal mind. Through the Science Mrs. Eddy brought, this image in mortal mind will be replaced with the image in the divine Mind. That's why she says: “Take divine Science ... study it, ponder it ... but murmur not over Truth if you find its digestion bitter [when you find you must lay down the mortal viewpoint, give up your most cherished beliefs or what Jesus referred to as cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye].... When you approach nearer and nearer to this divine Principle, when you eat the divine body of this Principle” you are exchanging the mortal body for the immortal body or the “primal elements of Truth and Love” (559:17-26). Your real body is “the structure of Truth and Love” (583:12).

Tina: Would you say the textbook is our divine body?

Florence: Yes, the textbook is synonymous with divine Principle, Love. It is the divine body we put on as we lay down the mortal body.

The mortal body is symbolized by The Mother Church material organization. This organization was scheduled for complete dissolution, to be effected by Mrs. Eddy's famous estoppel clauses, which stopped all its vital functions because the real body, like the real Mother Church, had shed all materiality and “blossomed into spiritual beauty [whose] communion [is] universal and divine.”

Billy: Would you please repeat what our true Mother Church is? How do we find it?

Florence: We find our true Mother Church “by entrenching ourselves in the knowledge that our true temple is no human fabrication, but the superstructure of Truth, reared on the foundation of Love, and pinnacled in Life” (Pul. 2:27). Mrs. Eddy asks, in substance, if this is the true Mother Church, isn't it always with you? Can it ever be disturbed? Can Life die? Can Truth be uncertain? Can Love be less than boundless? The real Mother Church is always with you, as your real being, as “the structure of Truth and Love.”

Grace: It is beyond the ken of mortals to comprehend what Mrs. Eddy accomplished. She was totally governed by God. Mrs. Eddy speaks of “spiritualizing materialistic beliefs” (316:28). It is the spiritualization of thought and the Christianization of daily life, she says (272:19) that is important, that lets in the light and brings the divine Mind, Life, into humanity's experience.

Spiritual education alone will meet mankind's yearning for spirituality, and speed the day of understanding. How little of what Jesus taught and demonstrated was comprehended even nineteen centuries after his sojourn here, until Mrs. Eddy explained (glorified) him.

In writing Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy stepped out of the picture completely, and wrote down what God dictated—what divine Love dictated. With every passing year she saw more clearly that Christian Science could only be understood through the spirit of the Christ—that Science is not Science unless it be Christian to the highest degree, unless it illustrates and demonstrates the Christianity of the Christ. It is the evangelization of the human self that is resisted, the spiritualizing of our mentality. Science, she said, is 'God manifest in the flesh.' It is God disciplining and destroying evil, physically, morally, and spiritually. The human will must be subordinated to the divine; God is the only actor. The shadow, the image, can't act or think.

Human experience is the externalization of conscious and unconscious thought. Therefore mortal mind, the human mind, must be replaced with the divine Mind, and the utter error of supposed life in matter with its pain, ignorance, supersitition, malice and hate must be rejected in all its phases. The carnal mind is not eager to give itself up, and this reluctance on the part of mortals to rise above material standpoints, portends a long night to the traveler.

Jackie: It seems unfortunate that since Mrs. Eddy's departure Christian Science has been officially presented to the world as a religion rather than as a Science.

Florence: Yes, that's true. Impersonal animal magnetism doesn't war against persons but against the development of the idea. However, an understanding of the living light, the Word of God as presented in Science and Health, puts an end to the darkness of animal magnetism, and eventually it will be learned that all men have one Mind, (340:20), the divine Priciple, Love.

Moreover it is important to see that anything that tries to save the human ego, the little “i,” is “religion.” Until we spiritually grasp the fact that we have no selfhood apart from the one divine Selfhood of God, we are studying Christian Science as a religion. This is what Mrs. Eddy is telling us in her opening statement on page 1 of the textbook where she equates a spiritual understanding of God with “unselfed love.” Here she is is telling me, Get Florence out of the way, because a personal sense of self—the sense of a selfhood apart from God—has no place in being. As long as we entertain a personal sense of an “I” or ego studying the textbook, it will be religion.

Once the world sees that Christian Science is a Science and not a religion, progress in the understanding of this Science will escalate exponentially.

Sally: And fortunately, the revelation is contained in a textbook. Any honest seeker for Truth can go to that book without the assistance of minister, priest, practitioner, rabbi, or any third party. Any honest seeker can study its message. He will hear the voice of God speaking to him and find himself reborn. The healing and regenerating effects of Christian Science follow the understanding of the divine Principle and of the Christ-spirit. For this Principle, Mrs. Eddy says, there is no ecclesiastical monopoly. Its only priest is the spiritualized man (141:17) who must grow in spiritual understanding unencumbered by priestcraft.

Moderator: Think for a moment of the stupendous challenge that faced Mrs. Eddy: one lone woman, with a glorious message from God for mankind, charged with the grandest trust of heaven, yearning to fulfil her God-bestowed mission to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth. Every conceivable obstacle was thrown in her path. She had not a cent in her pocket. Her family was ashamed of her and disowned her. Wherever she sought shelter she was looked upon as peculiar.

Mocked and persecuted, this lone Messenger of God grasped courageously at every possible medium through which she might interest people in the good news God had given her in that great revelation of 1866. Forming a church was an absolute necessity in the beginning. It was the only way she could attract people who would listen to her message.

Mary B. Glover Eddy's Advertisement

Marie: Irving C. Tomlinson in his Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy, p. 130, says that he has in his possession a quaintly worded card on which is printed the following notice of lectures to be delivered by Mrs. Eddy:Invitation. Mary B. Glover Eddy, author of “Science and Health,” will interest all who may favor her with a call at her rooms with her Parlor Lectures on Practical Metaphysics, and the influence that mind holds over disease and longevity.How to improve the moral and physical condition of man, to eradicate in children hereditary traits, to enlarge the intellect a hundred per cent, to restore and strengthen memory, to cure consumption, rheumatism, deafness, blindness and every ill the race is heir to. Place: College Rooms, Columbus Ave. 569. Time, Thursday 3 P.M. Price $0.25“While recalling the story of these lectures of long ago,” says Tomlinson, “Mrs. Eddy once said to me, as I later recorded her words:In the early days of Christian Science, in order to interest people, I was forced to adopt many ways and methods. I would lecture to a parlor full of people, and at the conclusion of the address they would seem to grasp little, if anything. One evening after speaking for a few moments, I asked all to rise who understood what I had been saying and not one rose to his feet.

Francie: Mrs. Eddy not being able to get her point across reminds me of Art Linkletter's experience in lecturing to teenagers after his beloved daughter committed suicide in connection with drugs. Expecting on this particular occasion to address high school seniors, he was confounded upon being led into the auditorium and seeing first and second graders! His prayer for inspiration was answered and he began to tell them little stories each carrying the message of how dangerous it was to do certain things, all leading up to the dangers of using drugs.

Among the letters of praise he received upon returning home was one from a six-year-old who wrote, “Thank you very much, Mr. Linkletter, for coming to our school and leading us into drug abuse.”

The point Mrs. Eddy was trying to make in relating the difficulty she had in getting people to understand her explanation, was that healing is something that everyone can understand and identify with. Tomlinson then relates that Mrs. Eddy said, “ 'The way to establish the Cause through reason is through writing and preaching and lecturing. This is temporal. But the way to establish the Cause through revelation is by healing, and this is permanent’ “(ibid).

A Testimony

Moderator: On this I can speak from experience, as I know most of us in this class can. It was healing that permanently brought my family into Christian Science many years ago. It was a case of “man's extremity is God's opportunity.”

Through an accident my mother had lost her sight. After several excruciatingly painful operations through which the best eye specialists endeavored vainly to restore at least partial sight, all hope was abandoned. My father at that time was suffering from an incurable disease and doctors gave him but a short time to live and advised him to put his affairs in order. In this dark hour a man in whom my father confided his dire circumstances said, “My friend, be of good cheer. You and your wife can both be helped. I sat in a wheelchair many years, thinking there was no cure for the rheumatism. But I heard of Christian Science and was completely healed.” He advised my father to go and see a Mrs. Coulter, C.S., who hadher home and office in the Lincoln Hotel, Seattle.

Greatly encouraged, my father took my mother to see Mrs. Coulter. My father at that time did not think his own difficulty could be healed, as he was somewhat steeped in medical lore, and had read in his “Doctor Book” that his difficulty was fatal. When my mother's sight was fully restored after three visits, unbelievable joy and prayerful thanksgiving reigned in our home. It was then that my father decided perhaps he, too, could be helped. He was perfectly healed in one treatment. My mother then confided to the practitioner that my little brother had been wearing a truss for what the doctor had diagnosed as hernia. Mrs. Coulter said, “You have seen what God can do. Go home and read the textbook, and you will find your little boy is all right.” The next morning when Mom was dressing this little boy she found him entirely healed. Mrs. Coulter at that time was in her ninety-first year. I was about seven years of age then, and these wonderful healings made a profound impression on me. In heartfelt gratitude I would sometimes climb up to the attic and in the corner where the chimney ran through I would kneel down and ask God to help me understand this marvelous Science so that someday I could help and heal people in the way my mother and father and little brother had been healed.

Those healings have overshadowed everything in my life, and my prayer, “0 God, feed my famished affections for a higher holier understanding of what God and man is,” has been answered in ever-increasing comprehension of the Science of Christian Science.

To Mrs. Coulter it had become solid conviction that disease is but the image of a lie. Disease is not matter or a part of matter. It is but the result of a falsehood. She recognized the physical difficulties to be but the image of wrong thought. She saw it as just that, and it was healed, much as a mathematician spots error in a calculation and substitutes the right answer for the wrong one.

The first and crucial error held by a patient is the false belief that he is the product of a sex-creation—that he is born of a woman and consequently life is here in the form of mortality, subject to disease and death. Mrs. Coulter knew that material birth, existence, and death are pure illusion and the opposite of Truth. She put aside the claims of the flesh and saw only the spiritual, the perfect man.

“Unless we have better healers, and more of this work than any other, is done, our Cause will not 'stand and having done all stand.' Demonstration is the whole of Christian Science, and nothing else will save it and continue it with us. God has said this—and Christ Jesus has proved it” (Christian Science Journal, June, 1936, from a letter by Mary Baker Eddy).

In beginning with a patient you must see the spirituality of his being and be fortified with the truth about the situation so you can deny the beliefs with understanding.

Evil Appearing to Exist

Billy: Through what process did Mrs. Eddy finally learn how mythical evil could even appear to exist?

Anna: She scientifically analyzed the terms “animal magnetism” and “mesmerism,” which were much in vogue in her day. She saw that in the same way the sleeper is mesmerized to believe his dream is real, so the waking day-dream of material existence is also only a mesmeric state which comes to an end only as the day-dreamer awakens to the spiritual fact that man is always the spiritual image and likeness of God, Mind.

The matter we see around us in our waking hours is no more real than the matter we see in sleep-dreams where we also meet people who appear to have life and intelligence in their bodies. But what happens when we wake up after having dreamed the house was on fire and active intelligent firemen were everywhere present with their hoses and fire extinguishers bravely endeavoring to subdue the flames?

When the change of consciousness we call “waking up” takes place we realize the people, the firemen, as well as the objects and circumstances in our dream, were all illusions; the sense of life, activity, the intelligence the firemen were expressing, was all false. These forces—life, intelligence, activity, substance—were not in the dream people. Life, intelligence, substance, activity are not in matter anymore than honesty, love, loyalty, or honor are in matter. These latter are emanations of God. All life, truth, intelligence, activity, etc., is in God, infinite good, and remains in God, and is reflected by man. When we perceive this truth, we realize we always have perfect God and perfect man as the reality, and any digression from perfection is pure illusion, a dream state. When the cause is perfect, the effect is perfect since like produces like, and nothing can be expressed in effect that is not contained in cause.

We awaken from this dream of material life and death solely in proportion to our understanding and manifestation of the nature of God. As our thoughts become more God-like, we shall depend less and less on matter—which is a state of deadness—until we see we are one with God as Principle and idea, one in spiritual being. “Existence separate from divinity, Science explains as impossible” (522:10). Through the teaching of the textbook we are resurrected out of the deadness of mortal beliefs.

Mrs. Eddy totally rejected mortal mind and its false point of view.

Florence: This total rejection of mortal mind, the carnal mind that is enmity against God, was a doctrine too radical for the students who came to Mrs. Eddy during the first fourteen years, and this together with the persecution they suffered and their own character flaws, caused them to rebel.

Julia Bartlett in her Memoirs tells of one such rebellion, how Mrs. Eddy humbly met their lack of understanding of her God-ordained mission, and how she courageously rallied her remaining troops and urged them on to higher attainments.

Moderator: Sally, you have a copy of Miscellaneous Documents. Would you please read Julia Bartlett's account of the 1881 rebellion? It throws so much light on the fearful price Mrs. Eddy paid to bring Christian Science to the world. Julia's account is a vivid portrayal of Mrs. Eddy's brave struggles in the early days before Christian Science gained world-wide recognition. We know from other sources that besides enmasse defection and apostasy, this period was ringed with a welter of small harassments and endless dismal trivia that would try the souls of saints. But Mrs. Eddy was fired with a great vision. She knew but one way to go, and that way was forward. God had called her, armed her with forces impregnable. God was her Mind, and He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;

Oh be swift my Soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet.

-Julia Ward Howe.

Struggle Over Who Shall Be Greatest

Sally: Julia Bartlett's accounts starts:

In October, 1881, eight students who had allowed error to enter their thought, united in writing a disloyal letter of false accusations to their Leader and signed their names to the same. This cruel letter was read by one of their number at a meeting of the Christian Scientists' Association in the presence of Mrs. Eddy who was the President of the Association. She made no reply, and when the meeting, which was held in her house, was closed, she went to her room and all the students went to their homes with the exception of two. These two remained with their beloved teacher to comfort her in her sorrow and anguish for the sins of those who were persecuting their Leader and forsaking the cause of Christian Science when they were so much needed. [The eight were no doubt students who had been on more or less intimate terms with Mrs. Eddy, and thought of her as just one of them; and this familiarity was not conducive to engendering the deep respect and reverence due Mrs. Eddy. Thus when students of the caliber of Julia Bartlett, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Poor, and others of this mold entered the ranks and were enthusiastically welcomed by Mrs. Eddy (because of their demonstrated spirituality of thought), envy and jealousy, and “who shall be greatest,” reared its ugly visage in those less spiritually motivated, and erupted in this apostasy.]

I was in Salem at the time and could not attend the meeting but the next morning on hearing what had transpired I took the first train for Lynn, desiring to be with my dear teacher and to be of some service in her hour of trial. Dr. Eddy admitted me to the house. I found Mrs. Eddy seated by the table and the two students who had spent the night with her sitting near her, I quietly took a seat near them as did Dr. Eddy also, and listened to Mrs. Eddy who was talking with a power such as I had never heard before. They were wonderful words she was speaking while we young students were receiving of the great spiritual illumination which had come through her glorious triumph over evil.

Marie: Wasn't it splendid the way Mrs. Eddy could bounce back?—her resilience, her ability to go to God for comfort and reassurance and wisdom for the next step, her willingness to forgive and forget and always lie on the watch for an opportunity to bless her enemies?

Material Body an Illusion

Sally: Yes, that was what kept her thought in line with the spiritual and eternal, and it individualized, in her, infinite power. It was what made her receptive to revelations from divine Love.

Continuing, Julia Bartlett says that just before she arrived, Mrs. Eddy had been sitting with the others,...and the burden was still heavy upon her, when all at once she rose from her chair, stepped out into the room, her face radiant, with a far away look as if she was beholding things the eye cannot see. She began to talk and to prophesy of the blessings which would reward the faithful, while the transgressor cannot escape the punishment evil brings on itself. Her language was somewhat in the style of the Scriptures. When she began, the three with her, seeing how it was, caught up their pencils and took down what she said. When she was through speaking she put down her hand and said, 'Why, I haven't any body.” And as she came back to the thought of those about her, they were so moved by what they had seen and heard their eyes were filled with tears, and one was kneeling by the couch, sobbing.

It was at this point, as she sat down and began talking to them that I arrived. When she was through, she said, 'I would like you three to stay with me three days.' She said she did not know what might be, but felt there would be a great deal for us.

Those three days were wonderful! It was as if God was talking to her and she would come to us and tell us the wonderful revelations that came. We were on the Mount! We felt that we must take the shoes from off our feet, that we were standing on holy ground. What came to me at that time will never leave me.”

The following month (November 9, 1881) Mrs. Eddy was ordained paster of the Church of Christ, Scientist, at 8 Broad Street, Lynn, in her little parlor, with about fifteen present. Mrs. Abbe K. Whiting extended the right hand of fellowship. A table stood in the center of the room and Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Whiting, and I were on one side while on the other side were the few students standing. Mrs. Eddy stood so meek, with her head bowed and a beautiful spiritual expression on her face, while this young student (Mrs. Whiting] took her hand and talked to her like one inspired, as she was. It was all very impressive. Mrs. Eddy had preached five years but was not ordained until the date given above.

Rookie: It was on December 25th, 1881, in this same little house that Julia Bartlett united with the church.

Mrs. Eddy was soon leaving, to go to Washington, D.C. for a time to lecture and teach and do what she could to start the Science in that important city. For this reason she had called a special meeting of the Church to be held in the evening to admit Julia and one other, as members, that they might take their place in the church work during her absence.

Because Mrs. Eddy knew she would not be returning to Lynn, but would make her home in Boston after her Washington, D.C. venture, her household goods were nearly all packed and taken away to be stored. The floors were bare. There were a few chairs, a small writing desk, and a packing box in the room. The packing box stood on end and there was a lamp on it. Mrs. Eddy sat beside it. There were about ten church members present. Mrs. Eddy read the seventeenth chapter of John. She begged them not to allow envy or any root of bitterness to spring up between them, but “that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” Let no pride come up, she counseled, or vain inquiry, “who shall be greatest?” She urged them to remember that she had made herself the servant that she might lead others to Christ. Her parting remarks to them on the eve of her leaving the city and her admonitions in regard to the care of the Church sank deep into their hearts. “We were saddened at the thought of parting with our beloved teacher, but were brave and courageous in taking up new responsibilities, resolving to be faithful in following her instructions, knowing that God would give us strength according to our needs” (Miscellaneous Documents to Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy, p. 176-178).

Moderator: Mrs. Eddy didn't take any chances with envy, jealousy, and “who shall be greatest” disrupting the fledgling Church in her absence. Before she left she appointed the four women who were to take turns conducting services. This wise selection of who should lead in her absence forestalled any quarreling over who should occupy the place of honor. The students had a lot of growing to do. They didn't have the same love for humanity that Mrs. Eddy did, which made her always a warrior with armor on, fully awake, alive, alert, aware of what was going on around her, and always ready to challenge error's right to exist. Her troops must learn to do the same.

Mrs. Eddy also constantly urged her followers in the direction of better healing work. Healing is the bugle call for the real purpose of Christian Science which is the healing of sin, and sin is any belief that separates man from God, from his God-being which is always at hand awaiting man's recognition and acceptance.

Call to James Neal

Tommy: A letter written to James Neal bears testimony of the high premium Mrs. Eddy placed on healing as the way to start in “fulfilling each hope and aim”:Your letter is my best New Year's gift .... Now, thank God, I have at least one student in Boston that promises to be a Healer such as I have long waited and hoped to see. Oh may the Love that looks on you and all, guide your every thought and act up to the impersonal, spiritual model that is the only ideal—and constitutes the only scientific Healer.

To this glorious end I ask you to still press on, and have no other ambition or aim. A real scientific Healer is the highest position attainable in this sphere of being. Its altitude is far above a Teacher or preacher; it includes all that is divinely high and holy. Darling James, leave all else and strive for this great achievement. Mother sighs to see how much her students need this attainment and longs to live to see one Christian Scientist attain it. Your aid to reach this goal is spiritualization. To achieve this you must have one God, one affection, one way, one Mind. Society, flattery, popularity, are temptations in your pursuit of growth spiritual. Avoid them as much as in you lies. Pray daily, never miss praying, no matter how often: “Lead me not into temptation,”—scientifically rendered,—Lead me not to lose sight of strict purity, clean pure thoughts; let all my thoughts and aims be high, unselfish, charitable, meek,—spiritually minded. With this altitude of thought your mind is losing materiality and gaining spirituality and this is the state of mind that heals the sick.. .. “ (Lyman P. Powell, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 322).

Rocky: In his Reminiscences, James Neal relates an incident which gives a glimpse of his character and also a glimpse of the prevailing hostility. Neal's study with Mrs. Eddy at her College opened up a tremendous vista, giving him not only a new point of view but a whole new set of realities, and upon his return to Kansas he immediately began healing friends and fellow townsmen—deafness, blindness, insanity, tuberculosis, and a broken skull among many other healings.

While visiting his family in Kearney, Nebraska, he was requested to help a seriously ill child whom the doctors were not able to heal. After one day's treatment to which the child did not respond, the mother, fearful for the child, returned the case to the doctors. The child died soon afterward, and on the basis of his one day's treatment the newspapers announced that the coroner's inquest was expected to result in a charge of manslaughter against Neal. The paper also announced that Neal had run out of town on a freight train at night to escape arrest. Neal wrote the newspaper expressing his regret that the child had died. He explained to them that she had been treated for twelve weeks by doctors and he had only treated her one day; that her mother had returned to medical treatment, and the child had died under the care of physicians. He also explained to the paper that far from leaving Kearney, he had decided—because of the situation in which he found himself, and all the criticism—to stay for six months, and gave them the hotel where he could be found and the hours during which he could be reached there.

To make a long story short, at the inquest, the coroner was unreasonably rude and rough with Neal. At the end of the inquest, a juror who had been hand-picked for his known hostility to Christian Science came to Neal for treatment. Many others in Kearney came to Neal for treatment and were healed. (See Neal Reminiscences.)

Love is the secret of all healing, Mrs. Eddy said, the love which forgets self and dwells in the secret place, in the realm of the real. But it is not mere human love that heals, she pointed out, not a love for a person or for anything—it is Love itself. The realization of this Love for a moment, will heal the sick or raise the dead. (See Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy, Irving C. Tomlinson, p. 91.)

Francie: But this Love that we must be is reached through godliness or Christianity which is a human necessity; man cannot live without it; he has no intelligence, health, hope, or happiness without godliness. (See '01.34:26.)

Miss Clara Barton, celebrated philanthropist and first president of the American Red Cross Society, although not a Christian Scientist, said of Mrs. Eddy in an interview appearing in the New York American of January 6, 1908: “Love permeates all the teachings of this great woman—so great, I believe, that at this perspective we can scarcely realize how great.”

Moderator: Many decades have passed since Clara Barton made that famous statement, and many more will pass before Mary Baker Eddy is put in proper perspective—even centuries may pass. The vastness of Christian Science and the fixedness of mortal illusions preclude any widespread early acceptance of the Truth she brought.

Rocky: Doesn't Mrs. Eddy also speak of “the human hatred of Truth?”

Sally: Yes, Mrs. Eddy had hoped Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance until experience taught her otherwise.

Rookie: What is this Truth that stirs “human hatred?”

Call No Man Your Father

Florence: I believe it is the same Truth for which Jesus was crucified, namely, the total rejection of the mortal standpoint. Jesus said, Call no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven. He knew: “man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble ... for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one” (Job 14:1,4).

Lydia Hall was present when “Mrs. Eddy received a letter from Christian Scientists in Concord asking her to congratulate them over the birth of a Christian Science baby. She read it out loud; then with apparent indignation uttered: 'A Christian Science Baby! A crime! Just as much a crime as murder would be!' She paused a few moments; then raised her hand and shaking her finger declared with great emphasis: 'No loyal Christian Scientist will ever marry.' “(In later years, when those remarks were repeated, they ran head-on into official opposition; and Lydia was finally driven to recant. On her death-bed, however, she confessed that her recantation was erroneous and that she had stated Mrs. Eddy's remarks exactly as she had understood them to have been spoken)” (DCC. 255).

Bill: Mrs. Eddy had come to reveal the Principle of man's being. She had come to show us how to calculate spiritually just as Jesus calculated spiritually when he restored first Lazarus and then himself from death. She knew man was a calculus of spiritual ideas, and she was teaching her students this truth. Naturally, then, she was disappointed when her students utterly failed to comprehend her teachings and continued to think man was a material creation and must be reproduced materially.

Bessie: But doesn't the Bible say that “children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is God's reward”? And isn't the Bible replete with blessings on “the fruit of thy womb, blessed shall be the fruit of thy body,” and “the Lord shall make thee plenteous in the fruit of thy body,”etc.?

Florence: Yes, Bessie. Christian Scientists, however, are looking at the Bible through the eyes of Mary Baker Eddy, because, with the Mind of Christ, she was able to penetrate the deep spiritual meaning of what the holy men of the Bible were saying. When we look at the Bible today in the light of Christian

Science, it is a completely new book. “Christian Science ... breathes through the sacred pages the spiritual sense of life, substance, and intelligence” (548:2).

Moderator: We are all pantheists believing there is life, intelligence, and substance in matter, until we are taught by Christian Science that actually, all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation. In pantheism, Mrs. Eddy says, the world is bereft of its God, whose place is ill supplied by the pretentious usurpation, by matter, of the heavenly sovereignty. (Un. 51:10) The claims of matter (mortal man) usurp the prerogative of God, saying, “I am a creator.” Matter says, God made me, and I make man and the material universe. But the law is that like produces like; and God, Spirit, could not create its unlikeness. The image and likeness of Spirit cannot be matter that is held as substance. Hence a sinful mortal is not God's man wandering from divinity, but a lie about man, and the lie was to be systematically rejected as ontologically unreal. This great truth causes the carnal mind to hate what Christian Science teaches, namely, the nothingness of matter held as substance, which calls for an end to the world's sense of marriage, and to childbearing.

True Marriage

Florence: All this talk about “marriage,” has nothing to do with the wonderful companionship and relationship that exists between a man and a woman on a good sound moral basis.

But true marriage in Christian Science is our wedding to divine Love, and this represents two individual natures in one; in this compounded spiritual individuality—this divinely united spiritual consciousness—there is no impediment to eternal bliss. (577:4-11) Nothing can defeat this step at which we all will finally arrive, as it is Jesus' prophecy of his second coming, beyond motherhood, making motherhood obsolete, when he pronounced on motherhood: “Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days” (Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this statement). Jesus saw that with his second coming the idea was complete, and further human generation would be at the expense of one's light.

Francie: If man is the image and likeness of God, Spirit, he would have to be incorporeal, spiritual, divine. He couldn't be a matter proposition because like produces like, and the likeness of Spirit could not be so unlike Spirit. God's creation is a divinely spiritual creation.

When we talk about the end of material procreation, meaning an end of mortals usurping God's prerogative as creator, it is this divinely spiritual creation, this universe peopled with spiritual ideas, that is to supplant the material creation. Man in God's image and likeness is a wholly spiritual creation which spiritual education will usher in. Galileo and Copernicus with their science presented the truth about the celestial bodies. Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy have presented the greater truth relating to Soul and body, which material beliefs have reversed. These material beliefs springing from the evidence before the five physical senses are the Pandora box from which all other ills spring.

Margie: It's the five physical senses that tell us mind and matter mingle. These corporeal senses are the liars that tell us there is life and sensation in matter, and that matter's supposed sensations can reproduce man, can form blood, flesh, and bones. (372:7) But the Science of being rests on the fact, the reality, that “God is Mind, and God is infinite; hence all is Mind” (492:25). The testimony of the physical senses must be supplanted by the testimony of spiritual sense that tells us all is Mind and Mind's idea.

Florence: The eventual cessation of human birth and death is the hidden message from the opening page of the Bible until its final closing page. As we saw earlier, Jesus made the cessation of human birth and death the central point of his mission on earth. He said, “Call no man your father which is on earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven.” He never called Mary his mother. When she stood at the foot of the cross, he looked at her and at his beloved disciple, John, and said unto her, “Woman [not mother] behold thy son [the disciple John].” Jesus' sense of mother, son, brother, sister, etc. was universal: “All who do God's will are my mother and sister, son, brother.” He yearned to comfort his mother whom he never recognized as his human mother since his whole message was that God alone is our Father-Mother. To John he said, “Behold thy mother!” And we read that “from that hour [John] took her unto his own home” (John 19:26,27).

God is Father and Mother, one; the Christ reflects the male and female Principle, which is one, not two. Sexuality and sensuality of any kind are not of God. Mrs. Eddy wanted her students to prove this. She knew that the end of belief in male and female as two, will come when woman stops child bearing. She said the monthly period left her when she came into Christian Science and she never saw it again. She insisted that all her women students make this demonstration. (DCC 14)

Twenty-three years before Mrs. Eddy received her great revelation, she had married George Glover and within a year had given birth to a child. In 1906 the New York World newspaper, pandering to her son's envy and greed, caused him to sue his mother. At that time Mrs. Eddy stated: “I am now being punished for the fruits of my first marriage.” If we sin, we suffer. The law is inexorable. Because Mrs. Eddy was open and receptive for God's message, God could reveal the true meaning of “sin” to her. God showed her how it was that sin existed as a false claim before the human concept of sin was formed and that one's concept of error is not the whole of error. God showed Mrs. Eddy that the human thought does not constitute sin, but vice versa, sin (belief in a mind apart from God, illusion, mythology) constitutes the human or physical concept. (Ret. 67:1)

Mrs. Eddy's Selfless Mission: A Summary

Juliann: Mrs. Eddy started every thought and every reasoning from God, not from the evidence before the material senses. This made her search “sweet, calm and buoyant with hope.” But with the exception of the few heart-hungry souls who listened eagerly, her message in the early days was met everywhere with malice and scorn, vilification and rejection. Yet she loved humanity enough to endure all things for the sake of bringing the truth that would free mankind from hopeless slavery to false beliefs.

Diane: Don't you think Mrs. Eddy knew, even if only subconsciously, that in spite of apparent rejection on all sides there were “millions of unprejudiced minds” waiting and hungry for the message she had to give?

Florence: Diane's question reminds me of a little article by Albert J. Nock, I recently read, called “Isaiah's Job”:In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet Isaiah to go out and warn the people as to what was wrong and what would happen to them if they didn't correct their errors. But the Lord cautioned Isaiah that his warning wouldn't do any good. The official class, the intelligentsia, and the masses will not even listen. They will keep on their own way until they carry everything down into destruction, and you will probably be lucky, Isaiah, if you get out with your life.

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job—In fact he had asked for it—but the prospect of failure put a new face on the situation: Why, if all that were so—if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start—was there any sense in starting it?

“Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up the new society; and meanwhile your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it” (Notes from FEE, Irving on Hudson, New York, July 1962).Mrs. Eddy had miraculous vision from the beginning of her discovery to discern the presence of this “Remnant.”

Marie: Her life was a miracle in the universe of mortal mind. With selfless love she inscribed on the heart of humanity and transcribed on the page of reality the living palpable presence of goodness. She lived for all mankind, and thus honored her creator. The light she gave was for all time, and her love was for all humanity.

Exhorting her loyal adherents to follow her courageous example, she asked, “Men and women of the nineteenth century, are you called to voice a higher order of Science? Then obey this call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon and the scaffold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many are there ready to suffer for righteousness' sake, to stand a long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and be in the battle every day and with no heed of hate's defiance]?” (Mis. 99:12-18). But, “0 friendly hand! keep back thy offering from asps and apes, from wolves in sheep's clothing and all ravening beasts. Love such specimens of mortality just enough to reform and transform them—if it be possible—then look out for their stings, and laws, and claws; but thank God and take courage, that you desire to help even such as these (Mis. 294). Like Jesus, Mrs. Eddy never stopped loving her enemies. She yearned to help all mankind and she did, but at a terrible cost. In Miscellaneous Writings (106) we note that if a brief summary of early Christian Science history were written as a parody on Tennyson's immortalization of the noble brigade at Balaklava, it would read:Traitors to right of them,

M.D.'s to left of them

Priestcraft in front of them,

Volleyed and thundered!

Into the jaws of hate,

Out through the doors of Love,

On to the blest above

Marched the one hundred.

SESSION VIII: SPIRITUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

SPIRITUAL CHARACTERISTICS

Moderator: Today we will take a look at the mental equipment which enabled Mrs. Eddy to fulfil the prophecies made in the Scriptures concerning her. First, however, let's consider what spiritual characteristics Mrs. Eddy hoped to develop in her students. What did she feel was important?

Exactness and Love's Golden Rule

Anna: I think she wanted her students, with help from the textbook, to start overcoming the little errors in everyday life. She wanted them to seek peace and love with childlike simplicity, and abide in the oneness and allness of Life, Truth, and Love, so they would become not theoretical teachers of the Word but demonstrators of its precepts.

Grace: Before dismissing her “March Primary Class” she warned that rivalry, jealousy, envy, revenge could ruin their otherwise brilliant careers. It was the self-asserting mortal will-power, she told them, they must guard against. (Mis. 281:4) It was the mortal

I, I, I, I itself, I,

The inside and outside, the what and the why,

The when and the where, the low and the high, All I, I, I, I itself, I.(This condemnation of mortal mind remained on her flyleaf of Science and Health until the fifth edition in 1908 at which time it was replaced with her paean of praise—when she felt her spiritual discovery had reached its culmination of scientific statement.)

She had shown them that divine Science is not a less exact Science than is mathematics, and works or lectures that try to meet the average perception and understanding of the day cannot be scientific. To be scientific in divine Science the message must be aflame with divine Love. That which suits the carnal mind, which is enmity against God, is not Science anymore than an arithmetic compiled with accommodations to popular ignorance of numbers would be mathematics. To say, for instance, “two times two is five” is close enough, is simply not correct. In Science, when love is lacking, no matter how correct the letter might be, it is not divine Science.

There are many people who think Christian Science can be acquired by rote, in the same way as worldly knowledge is. They believe that a person, by going through a course of instruction, or by getting certain words and formulas into the memory, can write and teach Christian Science. This is a fatal error. To really take up Christian Science is to enter upon the life of Love, to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you. It is a life of demonstration in the footsteps of Jesus. We only understand as much of Christian Science as we have lived. We must manifest the tenderness and holiness of womanhood as well as the righteousness and strength of manhood. Ages of misconception are finished; less and less will men believe that by hating their brother whom they can see, they can glorify God, the unseen. Vigilantly we must watch lest we “sleep as others do,” for in the night of drowsiness the thief comes to kill brotherly love. Watch, therefore, that love doesn't change to indifference. Indifference is a tool of the devil to keep us working for him, instead of obeying the Christ: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently” (I Peter 1:22).

Tommy: We stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century. Love or suffering will mark the hour when, in gladness, self will be exiled in oblivion; we will be content to think only the thoughts that come to us from God, and to work only as God works; we will care only to express in faithful detail, the beauty, goodness, wonder, and glory of the God that is our Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love.

Sally: It is of interest to note what Calvin C. Hill tells us Mrs. Eddy looked for in the way of qualities in those who came to serve her in her home. She was desirous, when possible, to have students she herself had taught. With those students she knew what God had planted in their heart and thought, and she knew that at the proper time she could awaken that which was planted and make use of it. She wanted helpers who loved to work for the Cause and were willing to take up the cross for it, as she herself was doing. The qualities Mrs. Eddy looked for in her helpers were love, orderliness, alertness, accuracy, truthfulness, fidelity, consecration, and humility. Mr. Hill, who for two years was assigned the task of finding suitable workers and helpers for Mrs. Eddy at Pleasant View, said he did not try to find a pleasant personality, but a quality of thought that would reflect the great revelation Mrs. Eddy had given to the world. In a letter to Mr. Hill she wrote: “We never can know who is in reality a Christian Scientist until he is tested under fire; then what is left are dregs unfit for use till purged and purified, or they are qualities that evil cannot destroy and are held by the power of God” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, p. 41).

Marie: In the textbook Mrs. Eddy lists “self-denial, sincerity, Christianity, and persistence,” as winning the prize. We also know she had a high regard for patience, promptness, diligence, and perseverance. The beautiful and glorious traits of humanity, she said, were toil, meekness, truthfulness, love, and they form the steppingstones to man's divinity. We should clasp these jewels to the heart and never part with them. If we don't have these qualities we should sell everything else and purchase them costly as they may be. She counseled her students to pay cheerfully the price of weary watches, privations, toll, self-denial, cross-bearing. Then, she said, they would experience peace and power, and grasp firmly the text of a life made glorious. (See Fragments, p. 26.)

Mrs. Eddy firmly believed that since there is only one Mind, God, we can all exercise the unlimited power of this one divine Mind, because we have inherited every quality and attribute of God. All is ours by reflection. I and the divine Mind are one thing. Nevertheless, “to one born of the flesh, divine Science must be a discovery” (Ret. 26:22).

Courage to Call Evil Nothing

Moderator: That was a brief resume of the characteristics and mental equipment that Mrs. Eddy hoped to develop in her students. Now what equipment did Mrs. Eddy possess that enabled her to carry out and fulfil the prophecy that she would bring the Comforter, “the Spirit of truth”? (John 14 and 16).

Sally: Mrs. Eddy had a great love for humanity. As we have seen, her “heart gushed with unspeakable pity and prayer” at the sight of a cripple or incapacitated person. She had an unquenchable desire to discover the method or Science Jesus was using when he healed the sick and sinning and raised the dead: “the lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs and from the educational systems of the priestcraft that holds mankind in bondage causing them to wear out years of servitude to an unreal master in the belief that the body governed them rather than Mind)” (226:25). It was this inextinguishable holy desire to free mankind that constituted Mrs. Eddy's most fundamental equipment, and drove her inexorably forward in the face of cruel vicissitudes.

This deep desire enabled her to heal the sick and raise the dead, and establish a system destined to free mankind from its bondage to illusions, to the Adam-dream.

Grace: Circumstances for the evolvement and acceptance of Mrs. Eddy's new way of thinking could not have been more adverse. Only undaunted courage could have seen her through to the glorious goal she attained—a courage that required constant renewal because the adversities, catastrophes, and calamities were never ceasing.

Jackie: Mrs. Eddy had the courage of Principle which dares to do right in the face of scorn. It's the kind of courage which is willing to risk reputation, rank, the prospects of advancement, the sympathy of friends and relatives, the admiration of the world, rather than transgress a conviction of what she thought was right. Menace and suffering had no power at all over her moral energy and force of will to do what she felt God was leading her to do. What Mrs. Eddy exhibited was the courage of soul that reverences itself too much to indulge any fear of what befalls the body. Her intense thirst for a pure inward life made her more than willing to sacrifice the mortal sense of life. Moral and spiritual good was so vivid to her that it obscured all worldly interests. Her sights were set on immortality and she heeded little the pains and pleasures of a day. Mrs. Eddy's love for good and for Godlike virtue was so consecrated that she even welcomed attacks and perils in the overcoming of which her loyalty to Principle could be tested. This total self-effacement is true courage.

Mrs. Eddy knew that what appeared as evil was nothing more than hypnotic suggestion, induced and kept alive by false education. With resolute courage she set to work to spiritually educate the world to realize its true God-being.

Johnny: Mrs. Eddy's lifelong inclination to endow others with her own good qualities—qualities they did not possess—caused her many a heartache and some terrible struggles. Her heart went out to all. She saw only good in her fellowman, but experience taught her wisdom along these lines. (See Mis. 294:17.)

Immense Labors

Grace: Mrs. Eddy's loving-kindness, absolute purity, and truthfulness, as well as her intelligence, practical ability, and capacity, enabled her to be both the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. With every passing year she saw more, foresaw more, perceived more. She was always progressing. She knew the importance of attention to detail. Nothing escaped her notice; nothing passed her by without yielding up its lesson for her. She was constantly profiting from the experiences of the past, and building on them, even when it meant the dismantling of her Church and College which she had struggled to build up over many years. When she got her leading from God, she hastened to follow with a deep heartfelt prayer: not my will but Thine be done. Often God's will was carried out while she was “bowed in strong affection's anguish” as when Dr. Eddy was taken from her. Her grief was overwhelming, but she rose and carried on.

With Mrs. Eddy, order was heaven's first law; it enabled her to accomplish an amount of work such as since the beginning of time no one has ever before achieved or executed. Without order she could not have managed the publication of her four hundred and thirty-two editions of the textbook, the sixteen Prose Works writings, the eighty-eight editions of the Manual, the “over 8,000 letters” filed in the archives of The Mother Church (see Lyman Powell, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 23); the establishment of the Journal, Sentinel, Monitor, and Quarterly; her many editions of Christ and Christmas, and in addition, all her classes, and endless other activities. These give a hint of the divine intelligence Mrs. Eddy reflected and demonstrated in her life.

Tommy: William Dana Orcutt was a witness to Mrs. Eddy's innate order. He knew of Mrs. Eddy's horrendous experiences with the printers who did the work on her first and second editions. On the first edition, as just one example, the printer had officiously taken it upon himself to “correct” Mrs. Eddy's capitalization, and many of the words that are part of the Christian Science language. When Mrs, Eddy discovered this unwarranted liberty taken with her original copy she laboriously undertook to make the changes in the plates themselves in order to save the expense of new plates. In a letter at this time, she wrote: “I have now the part of proofreader to take, or my book will be spoiled ... I have to count the letters of every word I take out, or insert, when I make corrections.”

The responsibility for the publishing and distribution of the first forty-eight editions fell entirely upon her.

Mr. Orcutt gives an unforgettable picture of the day Mrs. Eddy first came to the office of publisher John Wilson, at which time Mr. Orcutt came into the picture. He witnessed Mrs. Eddy's efforts to gain relief from business details by the appointment of her first publisher, William G. Nixon, who failed her miserably. Orcutt was next in contact with Dr. E. J. Foster-Eddy, and was called upon to correct omissions and commissions resulting from “the Dr.’s” indifference and inefficiency. All this made Mr. Orcutt's visits to Pleasant View more frequent, enabling him to record that... even then as a young man unacquainted with the countless other disturbing influences beyond those which aroused the indignation at the University Press, I marveled at the calmness and serenity with which Mrs. Eddy met every problem it was my duty to report to her, the directness with which she settled every question, and her ever-present consideration of others. She had no words of censure for anyone. Her regret was that Mr. Wilson had been put to extra trouble, and she was grateful for his wholehearted cooperation. From all these diverting disturbances, she was able to turn back to her spiritual tasks without the slightest outward sign of interruption. It was an amazing exhibition of inward control that the practical demands could be so completely disassociated from her definite mission without impairing either one.

A study of the obstacles placed in [Mrs. Eddy's] way by disloyal friends, jealous associates, and a hostile, prejudiced public, much of which I had ample opportunity to witness personally, could not fail to convince the most violent skeptic that the book Science and Health was bound to be issued, and that the message the author was undertaking to convey to the world was not to be and could not be suppressed. (Wm. Dana Orcutt, Mary Baker Eddy and Her Books. See Appendix).As Mr. Orcutt looks back he never ceases to marvel that she could express so much humanity and still possess the spirituality she manifested. It made a deep impression on him. There were so many little kindly acts and thoughtful gestures which cannot be put into words but remain printed on the tablets of his mind and enshrined in his heart.

He was, he says, always conscious of being in the presence of a remarkable woman. The greatness of her qualities became progressively more apparent. His early respect became admiration, his friendship for her developed into affection.

That Mrs. Eddy made many helpful suggestions that facilitated the printing of her books can be educed from his reflections:As I stand…besides one of the great presses [today] from which sheets of Science and Health are issuing with ease and accuracy…my mind goes back to those early days of anxious experiment. I recall the patient understanding with which Mrs. Eddy accepted the shortcomings, and the encouragement she gave by her unwavering confidence that the difficulties could be overcome. When the history of American printing is written, she should be given high credit for her contribution to the development of this phase of the printing art” (ibid).Mr. Orcutt infers that Mrs. Eddy gave many useful and laborsaving suggestions that were eventually incorporated into the printing process.

Jackie: Orcutt ends his book with that oft-quoted statement that no matter what others might think, Mrs. Eddy indefatigably labored on, “supremely content in the self-knowledge that ... she was delivering her message to the world.”

Regarding students, Mrs. Eddy was patient, sometimes over many years, with the vacillating, and even with the disloyal, but she always drew the line the minute the good of the cause demanded it. She never tolerated insubordination.

Gratitude Required

Anna: We know that almost from the cradle Mrs. Eddy had exhibited an exceptional proclivity for spirituality. It was this disposition and inclination to lean on “the sustaining infinite” that enabled her to receive triumphant guidance, which in turn empowered her to gain a foothold for the understanding of Christian Science. This understanding enabled her to accomplish unfailing healing and thus reveal the kingdom of heaven present here and now, through a Science that will unfold endlessly, eternally.

This innate spirituality, this Mind of Christ, with which her nature was so abundantly endowed, overshadowed her with a divine sense of gratitude. It was a gratitude to God who had been revealed to her as the only real Life; and this Life was Mind, the only cause and producer, producing only that which is good and true. This, Mrs. Eddy saw, was Truth, which was always perfect and complete, always meeting the present need. Meeting the human need showed Mind's nature as Love. This is why she says that if we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love we should try to remember our blessings. (3:27) Mrs. Eddy's conviction of the ever-presence and onliness of divine Life, Truth, and Love invested her with an unswerving dedication and imbued her with a calm strength. She would bring the truth of man's being to all men. She was filled with an inner light that enabled her to stand face to face with tragedy and disaster, knowing they were nothing more than Spirit misunderstood. Evil was aggressive mental suggestion, animal magnetism, nothing more. This had become an absolute conviction.

Sally: I have always felt that Mrs. Eddy put great stress on gratitude. Gratitude is the soul's great need. Without it there can be no union with the infinite Mind, no vehicle by which consciousness may rise to the infinite One who is All-in-all. When the kingdom of heaven reigns within, silent and deeply felt gratitude fervently reaches forward to commune with infinite Mind. Gratitude is the pathway leading to divine goodness which becomes a part of life, It is accompanied by faith which gives assurance of one's unity with God. It prepares one for greater spiritual growth and leaves no room for evil thoughts; it banishes all that does not blend with harmony. “When I see a student grateful,” Mrs. Eddy said, “I know he is safe” (DCC. 235).

Mrs. Eddy's Goal

Grace: Her goal could only be reached by steadfast adherence to the divine Principle being revealed to her in support of her great revelation in 1866. In order to keep her thought free and receptive for the leading of divine Mind, every trace of resentment or retaliation for the betrayals, condemnation, and persecution she suffered must be effaced. She knew herself, and all humanity, to be God's perfect reflection. As we look over the events and experiences that contributed to her lifework, we see the orderly, step-by-step unfoldment, each advance adding strength and dominion to the growing structure until her mission to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth was assiduously executed. Her goal was to found in human consciousness a Science and system that would bring to light man's God-being, man's present perfection. The Science and system set forth in her textbook, Science and Health, can be learned by everyone and so restore man's original and inalienable perfection and goodness. In order to bring this about, Mrs. Eddy had to lift Christianity into Science, through the wedding of Christianity to Science.

Evil Translated into Angels

For Mrs. Eddy, lifting Christianity into Science meant taking up her cross and patiently enduring the cruel attacks upon her. She was grateful for a chance to answer her critics, always careful to return good for evil. Well did she know that God would furnish both the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. (571:16).

Kathleen: Mrs. Eddy met the taunt, “Can any good thing come out of Bow, New Hampshire” with demonstrations of healing the sick, reforming the sinner and raising the dead. (See John 1:46.)

The events, people, and circumstances that seemed like evil—like “the sum total of human misery”—Love made “an angel entertained unawares” for Mrs. Eddy. It forced her to view every problem from a higher dimension, and see it as Spirit, God's presence, misunderstood. It forced Mrs. Eddy to lay down the mortal. It is the same with all of us. Without the laying down of the mortal viewpoint there is no chance of entering heaven. Heaven is a state of mind and not a locality. For this reason Mrs. Eddy wisely almost welcomed attacks that gave her an opportunity to elucidate and expound her doctrine. Moreover she knew “the very message or swiftwinged thought, which poured forth hatred and torment, brought also the experience which [would at last lift men to behold the great city that was heaven bestowed and heaven bestowing]” (574:19). Love for her enemies was a vital part of Mrs. Eddy's equipment. Mrs. Eddy's most salient characteristic was total selflessness; she knew the God-Mind was the only Ego, and was her Ego (and everyone's).

Moderator: We asked what mental and spiritual equipment Mary Baker Eddy had that enabled her to fulfil the role the Bible had prophesied for her. And so far we have seen that she had an all encompassing love for her fellowman and a consuming desire to free humanity from its ills. She constantly prayed to be shown how Jesus had accomplished his healings. She also had heroic, unflinching, courage without which she could not have carried on while ambushed on every side by implacable foes. We saw she was endowed beyond measure with a spiritual sense which caused her to lean “on the sustaining infinite” every hour of the day. This filled her with gratitude for the reality of being, as she was able to comprehend and be one with it.

Juliann: Mrs. Eddy knew that what blessed the human race was our state of mind: “More effectual than the forum are our states of mind to bless mankind” (Pul. 87:22). The power of Love brings all things good to the surface, making good arise among all people regardless of creed, race, or nationality, when Love is the dominating force of their lives.

Though a tireless warrior for Truth, leaving no point of proof undisclosed, she laid no claim to having evolved the great enlightenment she brought, always insisting it was divinely revealed to her.

Necessary Cessation of Well-earned Personal Acclaim

Moderator: Miss Lulu Blackman of Lincoln, Nebraska, who was in one of Mrs. Eddy's classes, reports that “throughout the class Mrs. Eddy effaced the sense of personality apart from God so plainly that she thought, spoke, and acted from the standpoint of her oneness with the Father” (Historical Sketches, Clifford P. Smith).

Mrs. Eddy's sole ambition was to bring Truth to the world. No one sought personal acclaim less than Mrs. Eddy. When concluding her address in Chicago, more than four thousand spontaneously rose to their feet in a personal tribute of love and reverence. At a later date the same enthusiasm and adulation was demonstrated when she spoke at Steinway Hall in New York City. Knowing that demonstrations of personal acclaim were not what would further the growth of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy wisely vowed they would not be repeated. The dedication of the original Mother Church in Boston, January 6, 1895, was attended by more than six thousand Christian Scientists from all over the country. Everyone recognized that this great achievement was the result of Mary Baker Eddy's many years of teaching and healing—bringing the Christ to mankind. The building was a testimonial to her. She, however, abstained from being present because she wished to avoid personal acclaim and adulation. She knew that every thought must turn instinctively to the divine Mind as its sole creator and intelligence, and until this is done man will never be found harmonious and immortal. (Mis. 307:30) (Later we will see that Mrs. Eddy hoped her presence would be felt wherever the truth of Christian Science was present.)

In her eschewing of all personal acclaim Mrs. Eddy revealed her true spiritual grandeur. Her self-effacement was total. She was fulfilling Jesus' prophecy: “Howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak” (John 16:13). Eventually even her mottoes in the Concord church were signed, “Science and Health,” not Mary Baker Eddy, as formerly.

This self-effacement augured success for Christian Science, placing it upon the firmest of foundations, namely, the living God, the one Mind that is Love. Mrs. Eddy laid her foundations in heaven; and those foundations came down from God out of heaven. They had nothing to do with Mary Baker Eddy as a person.

She got herself out of the way so completely that she was one with her divine Principle, Love. This is revealed in a conversation between Mrs. Eddy and Mr. Bowers, recorded by James Gilman in his Recollections (p. 17):At supper table Mr. Bowers said to Mrs. Eddy, “Christian Scientists call Science and Health a kind of revelation from God, but I think you originated that from your own superior mind and talent.” To which Mrs. Eddy replied: “Oh dear, no, I could not originate such a book. Why, I have to study it myself in order to understand it. When I came to the writing each day, I did not know what I should write until my pen was dipped in the ink and I was ready to begin….”

Mrs. Eddy began to explain Christian Science, mainly to Mr. Bowers, beginning by explaining what God is, and then what the real man is as God's idea, and then what the material man claims to be, and from this (the letter of the Science) on to the more spiritual sense of it, in which more and more was reflected the divine beauty, in which we were enabled to realize somewhat how paltry were the purposes of material motives and aims, when the richness of the Love of eternal goodness might be ours to know and realize always, if we would but become completely subject to it in the necessary self-surrender degree that this Love naturally involves….

As she talked she gradually impressed us deeply with the sense of the divinity of God's Love, so that it became perfectly plain to our understanding that that glorious state of mind included all goodness, all reality, being perfectly satisfying, making lesser possessions, aims, or desires appear paltry and poor indeed.In her final statement in “The Apocalypse” chapter, Mrs. Eddy speaks of her “present feeble sense of Christian Science” (577:28). It is “feeble,” however, only in comparison with the infinite vastness of all that is contained in the divine matrix of infinity, the system and Science of which Mrs. Eddy has revealed in her textbook, and which will unfold forever.

A Science To Be Learned

Anna: Mary Baker Eddy's life was not an accident. Her coming on earth was something that has been kept secret since the foundation of the world (Matt. 13:35; Rom. 16:25). From early childhood Mrs. Eddy's heart hungered for enlightenment. She was ever watchful for the meaning of everything. She wondered about the orderliness of everything, the regularity, the beauty: Wasn't it the same with God's plan for man? Hadn't Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the prophets, all come in orderly succession before the world was ready for Jesus? And Jesus had to appear and do his work, showing God's masculine nature, before someone could come and show God's feminine nature.

Instinctively, Mrs. Eddy had felt there was a Science behind the works of Jesus long before that Science was revealed to her—the Science or Truth that would bring to light God's motherhood.

Moderator: Kathleen, would you like to add to what has been said?

Kathleen: From earliest childhood Mrs. Eddy was being prepared for her divine mission. We know that a divine voice called her, and it was so real, even to the material senses, that a visiting relative heard it, and insisted that little Mary, then eight years old, answer her mother. Mary had previously heard the voice many times, and had often asked her mother if she had called. After the visiting relative verified the calling, Mary's mother read from the Bible the story of Samuel's identical experience and instructed her little daughter to answer as Samuel had done, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” After Mary obediently complied, she no longer heard the voice audibly, but her spiritual senses never ceased hearing God's call to fulfil his plan of world salvation through her work—through her mission to complete the work of Christ Jesus on earth.

Francie: Four years later when little Mary was twelve—the same age as Jesus when he was found in the temple questioning the religious doctrines of the elders—she, too, like Jesus, was manifesting an unmistakable sense of Principle when no amount of pressure could break her refusal to compromise her sense of right. Nothing could persuade her to yield and accept the terrible doctrine of predestination as a part of her religious creed. Her obedience to Principle at this early age augured well for the fulfilment of God's plan of world salvation through her mission to complete the works of the Christ Jesus on earth.

Rocky: The perpetual demand of Truth and Love is for the “light that changes chaos into order, and discord into the music of the spheres.” Mrs. Eddy answered that demand. She brought the Science that teaches the harmony that changes chaos into order. It tells us we only need to stop looking from wrong points of view. “Truth is [now] revealed,” she said, “it needs only to be practised.” She insisted that her students reduce her teaching to practise. Its Principle, its laws, and its system must be learned. In the Concordance to Science and Health more than one hundred and twenty references are listed to learn, learned, learner, learning, learns, etc. Like mathematics and music it must be learned in order to demonstrate it unfailingly.

Moderator: Yes, Rocky, it is something that must be learned. Divine Love is not natural to mortal mind, it must be learned. From earliest childhood Mrs. Eddy's thought trend was lofty, unselfish, loving. Even what she wrote at an early age set forth ideals of living that would improve the race and assuage grief. The whole bent of her thought was such that it eventually brought her into communion with God and the great revelation of 1866. From that time on she labored forty-four years to bring her terminology in Science and Health to the highest possible point of scientific correctness. The scientific evidence of her spiritual discovery accumulated to prove that the divine Mind produces in man health, harmony, and immortality. Before Mrs. Eddy left us, her message had gathered momentum and clearness in its culmination of scientific statement of the system that will unfold forever and bring greater and greater proofs of its divine efficacy.

In this brief review of Mrs. Eddy's mental qualities we have glimpsed a few of the characteristics that made Mrs. Eddy worthy and able to receive the great revelation and to found it in human consciousness.

Recess

EARLY RESEARCH

Moderator: We have been seeing some of the qualities, both masculine and feminine, that made Mary Baker Eddy equal to carrying out her God-appointed mission.

Are there any questions?

Marie: What prompted Mrs. Eddy to write the textbook?

Sally: Almost from the cradle, Mrs. Eddy knew that some day she was going to write a book. That her history was a holy one is shown by the many signs and wonders vouchsafed her in childhood when the divine Spirit seemed to overshadow her in a way that augured a divine destiny. Signs and wonders marked her entire life.

Grace: After her great revelation in 1866, she began instructing her students in accordance with her discovery that God is Mind, and God is infinite, hence all is Mind. At first she wrote out the lessons for students in longhand. This was slow, tedious, time-consuming work, These early teachings are preserved in her pamphlet, Science of Man. Most of her teaching had to be done orally, and thus much was lost. Mrs. Eddy knew Christian Science was destined to expand, and she earnestly pondered the best way to present it. One day as she sought advice and reassurance from her precious Bible, propitiously it opened to a place that told her to write it in a book (Isa. 30:8). From that moment she seriously began the writing of Science and Health. (See also Job 19:23, 24.)

Francie: Think of the colossal task Mrs. Eddy undertook when she set out to write the textbook! She had nothing human to guide her. She was beginning where Jesus left off. She could turn only to God, infinite Mind, and listen, then write down what God dictated.

Revelation Coming in Parts

Anna: In one of her Essays she says, “Whatever I have discovered, understood, and taught of Truth, I have never known beforehand its why or wherefore. It has always come into my thoughts and gone forth in words and deeds before God's dear purpose in it and the fruits it would bear were fully revealed to me. I have always been called in spiritual paths to walk by faith and not by sight, to abide in the senses of Soul and not body for sight and action” (EOF. 61).

We have seen before in these Sessions that Mrs. Eddy was busy for forty-four years constructing that which she herself could not possibly visualize as a whole since God revealed only part of the great spiritual system at a time. But she wrote down each part as it was revealed to her. Those who are familiar with the scientific structure of the textbook stand in awe before the magnitude of her accomplishment, and know that she must have performed every part of it as it was made plain to her. She always waited for God's prompting, then acted faithfully and fearlessly. Only when the many parts were all put together could she see the great spiritual structure she had built. She was always building in accordance with God's pattern, but God alone knew the pattern. She had to abide in the senses of Soul, and walk by faith, or she could not have fulfilled her mission to complete the works of Christ Jesus on earth. This meant writing the textbook, explaining how he did his marvelous works, which made it possible for every man, woman, and child to follow in some degree the example of the Master because she has given the Principle, the rule, and the divinely scientific system.

Moderator: Looking back, can we today in any way measure the stupendous undertaking that divinely devolved on one solitary woman? Can we in any way evaluate the prodigiousness of her venture, while harassed on every side by seditious students, power-enshrined priestcraft, invidious sections of the pulpit, press, and medical profession, all fearful of loosing their entrenched power? There was no one to uphold her cause. The battle was hers, and she fought it on this earthly field alone. But there was divine power behind her, giving assurance that she followed the path of Truth.

Juliann: And isn't it true that even the few who sympathized with her, in the early days, were ill-prepared to comprehend the full meaning of her deeply scientific theories? She was surely a lonely traveler, treading ground with which none of her contemporaries were familiar. Because her spiritual senses moved in God's grooves of Science, she entertained thoughts which radically differed from the prevailing acceptable mode. Many therefore regarded her as unorthodox, peculiar, and she was often shunned.

Rocky: We know her spiritual ascendancy was gained through self-abnegation and self-purification. Totally oblivious of human self, she was powerfully moved by a passion to bring out good in others, by a desire to understand God's law so that she could make it known to her fellowmen. Sorely did man need a helping hand to become virtuous and spiritually minded, and to know no hate. Man needed to know that all individualities are ideas of the one Creator whose sun shines on all alike. Mrs. Eddy practised Love, preached Love, and taught Love by her own example wherever she went. In all her writings she counseled the inherent power and advantage of Love. Her love for humanity was not the kind “that alters when it alteration finds. No! It was an ever fixed mark,” that enabled her to lift the veil, the strange delusion of material sense, that hides the true form and the ever-present spiritual perfection of man.

Quimby Mind-Cure as Translated by Mrs. Eddy

Moderator: What the world has yet to learn, perhaps, is that along with Mrs. Eddy's great love for mankind, she was the greatest Scientist ever to tread planet earth.

With every passing year of Mrs. Eddy's adult life, the thought was becoming stronger that there must be a spiritual law behind the healings Jesus performed, and that this law could be rediscovered for the benefit of the sick. When she heard of Quimby's healings the thought kept coming to her that perhaps Quimby had rediscovered this law and his cures were the result of his understanding of this law. In 1862, four years before she discovered Christian Science, she visited him with the result that she was healed. Her gratitude to Quimby was unbounded, and she was convinced he had rediscovered the law behind the spiritual healings in the Gospels. With great enthusiasm she proceeded to attempt connecting his treatment with the knowledge Jesus had. Her joy at being healed seemed, for the time, to suspend or hold in abeyance her usual good judgement. It was not until after her discovery of Christian Science that she began to see the deep chasm separating the divine healing from mental cures which are not based on the divine power and nature. This understanding then enabled her to separate the great personal kindness of Dr. Quimby from the mesmerism he was ignorantly practicing.

Elsie: Mrs. Eddy was later faced with charges that she got Christian Science from Quimby, wasn't she?

Moderator: Yes, Elsie, when Christian Science became popular, and teaching and healing became money-making professions—and particularly with Science and Health selling well because people were healed by merely reading it—then the notes and written explanations she had made for Quimby during their many talks were misinterpreted by enemies.

It must be remembered too that Mrs. Eddy had a pronounced natural proclivity for endowing others with her own saintly character, and this often led her into serious trouble. Quimby had a higher ideal than anyone else Mrs. Eddy had met up to that time. And when he was able to heal her she praised him to the skies. She wrote him letters explaining her views of how he effected his cures. These letters were later talked about by her enemies as though they were something secret. But, of course, they weren't. They were written in a great white heat of enthusiasm. She couldn't say too much in praise of him. In a letter she wrote a friend many years later, she said, “I actually loved him, I mean his high and noble character.” She was literally unstinted in her praise of him.

The love and gratitude Mrs. Eddy poured out on Quimby shows something exceedingly profound in Mrs. Eddy's nature—an element that was crucial in her mission as God's representative. Without that deep innate sense of love and gratitude she could not have fully reflected the divine nature. It speaks volumes.

Bessie: Mrs. Eddy then started a very active research into the healing process, didn't she?

Moderator: Yes, Bessie, she began to diligently search the Scriptures for a clue.

Medical Investigation and the Failing Apple

Tina: Didn't she investigate material medicines, too?

Moderator: Florence, would you like to give the history of that investigation?

Florence: Yes. Mrs. Eddy has herself written of her research into various so-called scientific fields before her great revelation in 1866. On page 24 of Retrospection, she states, “The discovery came to pass in this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 1 gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.”

Before she discovered the Science of Mind-healing, in her long search for the Truth, she had investigated medicine: “Wandering through the dim mazes of materia medica, till I was weary of 'scientific guessing,' I sought knowledge from the different schools—allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, electricity,…” She investigated scholastic theology, spiritualism, and mesmerism. During the twenty years prior to her great discovery she tested almost every phase of material belief which the human mind presents. She was then trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause. “As long ago as 1844 1 was convinced that mortal mind produced all disease, and that the various medical theories were in no proper sense scientific” (June Journal, 1887).

It was the case of dropsy which Mrs. Eddy speaks of on page 156 of Science and Health that was the falling apple. It showed her clearly that mind was the controlling agent in the patient's restoration to health. This case had been given up by the doctors, who had pronounced it hopeless.

Mrs. Eddy tells in the textbook what she prescribed. Visible improvement resulted. But because that same remedy had been administered by the doctor who had been in charge, Mrs. Eddy feared a too-prolonged use of the medicine might be harmful and asked the woman to give it up. The patient was afraid to do without the medicine. Then Mrs. Glover (Eddy) got the brilliant idea of giving the patient unmedicated pellets, without telling the patient, and the improvement continued. Soon after this the woman agreed to do without the pellets; but on the third day she fell ill again, and was relieved by more of the unmedicated pellets. She continued to take them until she was completely restored to health.

What a revelation this experience was to Mrs. Eddy!

She often referred to it, as we have just said, as the failing apple which began to show her that “the only logical conclusion is that all is Mind and its manifestation, from the rolling of worlds in the most subtle ether to a potato patch” (Mis. 26:5). It led to her great discovery.

The Final Revelation of What Life Is

Francie: The great ideas of God, of Soul, of immortality were never far from her mind during this early period of experimentation. She sensed a life pervaded by Christianity. It overshadowed her with a quiet exaltation. The conviction of God's goodness never left her, and it brought an inner steadfast certainty, an unquenchable inspired assurance that she was in touch with realities that set her apart, that she had been anointed with the oil of gladness above those around her.

Then came the great revelation! February, 1866.

In a moment of vision Mrs. Eddy saw that God, good, is All and includes all manifestation within itself; everything may therefore be freely honored as God's presence; she saw that all being is divine, spiritual, immortal, and wholly good. There was no matter, nothing that could limit, nothing that could cause pain or fear or death. It must have been a moment of unsurpassed joy and indescribable wonder. Forty years later Laura Sargent asked Mrs. Eddy what she saw at the time of her great revelation. Mrs. Eddy did not answer, but her face shone with a holy light and a far-off vision filled her eyes. She had seen that her life was God, and forty-four years later her last written words were, “God is my life.” Only spiritual growth will reveal how profound those last four written words were. God, indeed, was and is her life.

Alfred Farlow, who was often a guest in Mrs. Eddy's home, talked with her about this experience, and how she had been healed. He writes:At that time [February, 1866] it was not clear to Mrs. Eddy by what process she had been instantaneously healed, but she knew that her thought had turned away from all else in contemplation of God, His omnipotence and everpresence, His infinite Love and power. It eventually dawned upon her that this overwhelming consciousness of the divine presence had destroyed her fear and consciousness of disease exactly as the light dispels the darkness. She afterwards noticed that when she had entertained similar thoughts in connection with the ills of her neighbors they too were benefited and it was in this manner that she discovered how to give a mental treatment. (Historical Facts Concerning Mary Baker Eddy, by Alfred Farlow.) She found that “when thought is lost in the eminence of Mind the healing takes place.”

Moderator: And so it was that through divine revelation Mrs. Eddy brought about her own healing, after which she taught and healed for six years to prove the practicality of her discovery, before beginning to write the textbook, which then appeared three years later, in 1875. Nine years after her great revelation the “precious volume,” the “little book,” prophesied in Revelation 10, appeared and began its divine mission of revolutionizing world consciousness. The thousands of authenticated cases of healing and regeneration that took place through merely reading Science and Health attested to its divine origin.

SESSION IX: PROGRESS GODWARD

BEGINNING TO SEE WHAT'S IN OUR TEXTBOOK

Moderator: We have been seeing Mrs. Eddy's place in Bible prophecy and have also been trying to get a better understanding of the mystical symbolism she resorts to in order to veil the deep revelation she received direct from God.

Rocky: Why did Mrs. Eddy have to hide or veil her discovery?

Francie: She said that if her spiritual discovery was put out into matter, meaning into the prevailing gross materialism of the times, it would be killed. (EOF. 21.) Naturally it was not veiled to the spiritually minded. As understanding develops, and we learn the system, her statements aren't veiled at all.

Science & Health “Hopelessly Original”

Juliann: You often hear people say that Mrs. Eddy “got it from the Bible.” What is the best way to show them that this was not the case? She loved the Bible and went to it constantly for comfort, advice, and assurance, but her revelation came direct from God.

Tommy: If you hear this from people who are Christian Scientists you can turn them to Miscellaneous Writings, page 371:28, where she speaks of Science and Health with Key to Scriptures as “hopelessly original.” When it was first written it was hailed as conflicting with the Bible, as incorrect, unscientific, unchristian, even blasphemous.

Again, in Retrospection, page 35:4, she speaks of Science and Health as being so new, “so hopelessly original” in the basis it laid down for physical and moral health, and men were so unfamiliar with the subject, that she did not at once rush into publication. She had learned that the merits of Christian Science must be proven before a work on this subject could be profitably published. It was “hopelessly original” because she had to begin where Jesus left off—she had to begin in the Ascension era.

Johnny: No one on earth knew the meaning of the seven days of creation until Mrs. Eddy through divine revelation gave us the spiritual meaning of them. What she revealed to humanity will unfold infinitely. Today the “system” that she called Christian Science is something that can be learned by anyone desiring to do so. Mrs. Eddy presented it as a Science that operates in the same way that the science of mathematics or the science of music operates. We are indebted to John W. Doorly, C.S.B., and his loyal students and co-workers for their dedicated research and study of Science and Health that resulted in discerning the scientific system Mrs. Eddy worked into the textbook and which she said would unfold forever. (No. 45:28)

Tina: Why does Mrs. Eddy say that for forty years the Bible was her only comforter?

Florence: Because the Bible foretold her mission and prophesied the success of it. Often overlooked is the fact that Mrs. Eddy, in order to fulfil Jesus' prophecy, had to begin where Jesus left off, as Tommy just brought out. She was sailing in uncharted seas. She could only listen for God's revelation, and write down what came when she picked up her pen. Remember her conversation with Mr. Bowers. (See p. 133.)

The Bible was her only comforter because, as I just said, it prophesied her coming, and also prophesied the categorical victory of her mission. In times of persecution, Mrs. Eddy clung tenaciously to the promise of ultimate success implicit in the symbolic account of “the woman and her child” (Rev. 12). Also, she found verification for her revelations in the Bible. Her discernment of the Bible's holy nature caused her to love and revere it and turn constantly to it for comfort and assurance.

Bible as Foundation

Margie: While she looked to the Bible for comfort and assurance, in no way could Mrs. Eddy have gotten her Science from the Bible. As Florence and Tommy have noted, she had to begin where the Bible left off. She studied the Bible, but it was not until she laid the Bible aside and listened only to God that she could begin to write Science and Health. She tells us the Scriptures gave no direct interpretation of the scientific basis for demonstrating the Principle of healing until our heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to unlock this “mystery of godliness.” (Ret. 37:16). But the Key to the Scriptures did not come to her until thirteen years after she discovered Christian Science. It first appeared in the sixth edition of Science and Health in 1883.

“No human pen or tongue,” she says, “taught her what is in Science and Health.” She listened and wrote down what came to her. It was not until after God gave her the “key” to the Scriptures that she was able to see the Science in the Bible. Up to the fiftieth edition she headed her chapters with miscellaneous poetry. In the fiftieth edition she for the first time uniformly used Bible texts as the foundations upon which the chapters were based, and for the first time in the textbook she stated: “I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teaching of Jesus, of his Apostles, of the Prophets, and on the testimony of the Science of Mind” (269:22 present edition), because she had seen the verification of her revelation in the Scriptures.

Mrs. Eddy saw that there is a spiritual line that flows from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It is the line that follows Mrs. Eddy's definition of God, namely, the line of Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle. Then as we come into the New Testament, we begin the line of Life, Truth, and Love. Her definition of God is something that has evolved through the history of the holy men of the Old and New Testament. Many of these patriarchs, prophets, and apostles of God paid with their lives for voicing the truth that God communicated to them. The heartless persecution she herself suffered, from the same carnal-mindedness that killed prophet and apostle, created a fervent bond of love between Mary Baker Eddy and the holy men of the Bible, in which we see again “the ties which bind the wretched are tenderness unutterable.” Mrs. Eddy saw the genuineness of the Scriptures because the men who voiced the truth in them willingly faced death in order to give humanity the truth that God put in their hearts.

It must be remembered that we today have the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, which she did not have, but had to go to God direct. She had to bring the Comforter, the spirit of Truth which “will guide [us] into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear [direct from God] that shall he speak” (John 16:14). “We are indeed privileged in having the untranslated revelations of Christian Science. They afford such expositions of the…Christianity of Christ as makes even God demonstrable, the divine Love practical, and so furnishes rules whereby man can prove God's love, healing the sick and the sinner” (My. 179:29).

Grace: If she had gotten divine Science from the Bible she would have made void all the prophecies in the Bible concerning her coming. For example, Jeremiah's prophesy (31:22), “the Lord hath created a new thing [a new paradigm] in the earth, A woman shall compass a man.” Science is the new “thing” that will include Christianity. To Mr. Wiggin, a visitor in her class, she said emphatically: “if there had never existed such a person as the Galilean Prophet, it would make no difference to me. I should still know that God's spiritual ideal is the only real man in His image and likeness”(My. 318:32). Her Science was “hopelessly original” and depended upon nothing other than direct revelation from God, the divine Mind.

God was Mrs. Eddy's life, and He was her Mind. This is true of each one of us in the degree that we understand God as she did.

Anna: Mrs. Eddy's Science “breathes through the sacred pages [of the Bible] the spiritual sense of life, substance, and intelligence” (548:3). If we take away the spiritual signification of Scripture, “that compilation can do no more for mortals than can moonbeams to melt a river of ice” (241:15). Mrs. Eddy brought their spiritual signification, as it was revealed to her by God.

On page 46:7 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, “The divine Spirit ... has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime.” This is under the marginal heading of “Scriptural interpretation.” Before arriving at this particular wording, it was necessary for her to change her wording in several previous editions. She showed for instance, that she was not satisfied with wording which indicated that we had had the inspired Word in all ages. In 1901 it read “The divine Spirit ...has spoken in every age and clime through the inspired Word.” She continued to make changes in this statement through various editions until in the fifth edition of 1908 she arrived at the present phraseology which, it will be noted, does not state that the “inspired Word” has ever spoken before, but rather that the “inspired Word” has never spoken until now. The comparison with her former statements makes it clear that Science and Health is the “inspired Word,” which now speaks and will continue to speak from now on. We noted that it is the function of Science and Health to breathe “through the sacred pages the spiritual sense,” the spiritual interpretation. The inspired Word of Science and Health is the life of the Scriptures. Mrs. Eddy gave the spiritual perception of Scripture. (See 547:23-5)

Many passages in Mrs. Eddy's writings show that her revelation was entirely independent of anything written or said, or done by Jesus or anyone else (see My. 318:32). Mrs. Eddy's whole process in her evolution was to receive the spiritual revelation and then base it on the Scriptures. An example of this is Christ and Christmas. The first edition contained no Glossary. But in the second edition the Glossary appears with Scriptural texts as the “basis” of the sentiments in the verses.

Moderator: Also, in our last session we saw that Mrs. Eddy was for forty-four years engaged in constructing that which she herself could not possibly visualize as a whole, since God revealed only part of it at a time. She faithfully performed each part, undeviatingly, as it was made clear to her. She was impelled only by God, and acted as God prompted her to act. When the many parts were all put together, then, and only then, could she see in its entirety the tapestry she had woven, the Bride's vesture. Of course, as we saw, she was building according to a “pattern,” but it was a pattern that God alone knew, and she was acting under orders. Gradually it all gathered momentum and clearness until it reached its culmination of scientific statement. Then the proof was given that God's plan of salvation had been revealed to her and she had faithfully recorded it in such a way that it would unfold to spiritual thought step by step throughout time and eternity. God's plan, divine Science, is an infinite subject; and being a true Science it includes within itself “trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truths within its own domain” (Oxford Dictionary).

Mrs. Eddy saw that, though she had not yet reached the ultimate practical proof of absolute Christian Science, and might never reach it while remaining visible to the personal senses, she had written it. God had given her the ideas that enabled her discovery to gather momentum and clearness. And when she saw it had reached the culmination of its scientific statement (380:27) of God's plan of salvation she joyously, gratefully, placed on the flyleaf of Science and Health her paean of praise:

Oh! Thou hast heard my prayer; And I am blest!
This is Thy high behest:
Thou here, and everywhere.

SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, MEDICINE

Moderator: Andso it was that in an age when the world was sunk in abject materialism, Mary Baker Eddy appeared on the scene announcing: all is mental, all is spiritual. Matter, she said, is only a subjective state of mortal mind. (108:27) But she still had to probe this “mind” which she called “mortal mind” to show that all it presents is pure illusion. The new language of Soul which she discovered translates matter into its original language which is Mind, and gives the spiritual instead of the material signification.

But in order to see the truth of everything, namely, that all is infinite Mind infinitely manifested (468:9), we must look out from the divine Mind and see the universe and man as Mind sees them. Mrs. Eddy discovered the Principle and the scientific laws that enable us to understand how Mind, God, Principle, controls the body, and overcomes the pictures created by mortal mind. Mrs. Eddy gave us the answer to dualism. She showed us that in reality existence separate from divinity is impossible. We see why this is so as we study her textbook and gain an understanding of the one Mind in its Science, its system, and its structure.

Progress in Natural Science

Florence: In the field of natural science the philosophizing scientists have made tremendous strides towards seeing the unreality of matter through the outstanding achievements of such well-known physicists as Einstein, Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Max Born, Schrodinger, Weizacker, and others. Einstein believed in a universe of order and harmony. To him the void between present day physical science and reality presented a challenge. He agreed with St. Paul that the world which was created by the Word of God is made up of things which do not appear. It did not surprise me when a good friend of mine who is acquainted with a certain Christian Science Reading Room attendant in New York City related to me that on one occasion Einstein, who had visited this Reading Room, stopped at the desk and remarked to the attendant, “I wonder if you folks know what you have in your textbook.”

Marie: Another comment that Einstein is reported to have made is that Mary Baker Eddy had discovered and understood the theory of relativity long before he had discovered it. Naturally, there is no way of checking whether he actually made this remark, but one hears it so persistently, that there is probably some truth in it. Certainly his great discoveries and understanding of physical-science theories seemed to bring him much closer to an understanding of Mrs. Eddy's world of Life in and of Spirit than any previous physicist had glimpsed. And if, indeed, he did see confirmations of his “theory of relativity” in some spiritual explanations given in the Christian Science textbook, it is a great tribute to his innate spiritual sense. Mrs. Eddy held that All is infinite Mind, infinitely manifested. There is no matter.

Bill: In a certain way, the great philosophizing scientists of today are glimpsing the fact that if we want to understand being and God, meaning if we want to attune ourselves to the divine Principle that governs all in harmony, we must approach the Principle of all being with a like consciousness, for only like produces like. Our consciousness must become structured scientifically the same as the God- consciousness, or we aren't a true reflection.

Diane: What does that mean?

Sally: When you study music, Diane, you are slowly structuring your consciousness so it becomes like the principle of music. It is the same when you study mathematics. The more you learn mathematically the more your consciousness is structured mathematically. If you study law or gardening, that doesn't help you structure your consciousness mathematically, does it? Only like produces like. So, if you want to structure your consciousness in accordance with divine Science, you study the system of divine Science. Then, as Mrs. Eddy says (423:25), “Both Science and consciousness are now at work in the economy of being according to the law of Mind,” and your consciousness becomes gradually a true reflection of the one Mind.

Tommy: Mrs. Eddy's divine Science gives us a totally new frame of reference—a new paradigm, and makes it mandatory that our present obsolete way of thinking, feeling, and acting undergo a mutation from the physical and mental into the spiritual. We must mutate into the spiritual and out of the mental realm which today is coming more and more into focus, as witness the growth of psychiatry and the systematic investigation into many phases of the mental spheres.

In contrast to psychiatry and psychology, Christian Science has its origin entirely in the spiritual realm. It doesn't start with human thinking. Christian Science necessarily and inevitably starts with God, with Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. To start with God means a radical change, not just an improvement. When we start with God we are in a higher dimension where we no longer believe in, or are subject to, the condemnation of mortals to till the ground. We no longer believe that we have to “so improve material belief by thought tending spiritually upward as to destroy materiality” (545:7).

There is no matter universe if matter is thought of as substance. Matter is merely shadow, because there is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. “Matter,” Mrs. Eddy says, “is a misstatement of Mind” (Mis. 174:2); “Matter is an error of statement” (277:26). There is no matter as substance, and this makes so-called matter-substance simply a state of mind, and this erring state of mind is a misstatement of the divine Mind. Matter must be translated back into its original language, Spirit (Hea. 7:8), and man's identity seen as moving in the harmony of Science, where all is infinite Mind, Love, infinitely expressed.

Progress in Theology

Moderator: And in theology? Has there been progress in theology?

Grace: Yes, in theology, too, the world is making real progress. Mary Baker Eddy, the woman whom the clergy once ostracized and slandered, has returned and entered their pulpits. Since 1866 the clergy has gotten away from a hell of brimstone and fire. More and more they are using Love and not fear in explaining God, and are beginning to interpret the Bible spiritually as Mrs. Eddy did over a hundred years ago when they hailed her interpretation as blasphemous. Today the pulpit is searching the Scriptures for its healing truths, and emphasizing them. It augurs well for Mrs. Eddy's prediction that if the lives of Christian Scientists attest their fidelity to Truth, then in the twentieth century every Christian church in our land, and a few in far-off lands, will approximate the understanding of Christian Science sufficiently to heal the sick in His name. (Pul.22:9) Today many Christian churches are actively practicing faith healing, and we have one more year before the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of 2001.

Broader Views in Medicine

Moderator: We know that Christian Science is having a profound and ever-increasing effect on medical views, too. Who will comment on the changes that have been brought about in medicine since Mrs. Eddy's time?

Francie: Today doctors everywhere are admitting their dependence on God. One often sees rather prominently displayed articles reporting, for instance: “Top Doctors Across America Say: God Guides Our Work.” Many of these doctors say that there is never a day they don't fervently pray for the success of their work and that they will be kept from doing harm. In praying to understand God's love for man, they know that this understanding of His love puts them in a better position to understand human needs. Leading physicians, interviewed by The Enquirer, all stated there was no question that God guided their hand in surgery, that they communed with God before beginning their work, and were conscious of God in everything they did.

Juliann: We have seen the mushrooming of psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, showing the drift there into more mental and spiritual realms.

In the past few years, for instance, great progress has been made in their views of the “hereafter.” It has suddenly become respectable for doctors to admit there is life after death. For centuries the informed have known of the many returnings to life on this plane of those who were pronounced clinically dead, and thousands of such cases have been testified to both orally and in magazines of an occult nature. It took courage for young Dr. Moody to come out in print recently with the convictions his research had led him to form.

Priestcraft would object on the grounds that the hereafter should remain an issue of blind faith. Die-hard medics would naturally regard Moody's research as “unscientific.”

Elsie: Since the publication of Dr. Moody's book, Life After Life, there has been a flood of newspaper and magazine accounts verifying what Moody says in his book, and thus really spreading the message.

Bessie: Just this morning I read that Dr. Ira Morris, Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, states that he has seen dying patients undergo incredible changes. In certain instances they become almost holy in appearance, he says, and find serenity and peace even though they may be suffering the most ravaging of diseases. “If you had seen as many people die as I have, and had seen the way the lives of some of them lit up in their last few moments, you wouldn't have any doubt at all concerning the fact that the human spirit lives on.”

Dr. Morris said the changes usually appear only a few days before death. He cited the case of a young woman who was bedridden, perilously thin, her general appearance terrible. But in the last two days of her life, says Dr. Morris, she took on an entirely different appearance. “She became serene and dramatically beautiful. It was as if she had taken on a whole different personality. It wasn't the girl I had known before. It was somebody entirely different. To me it was a very clear example of the human spirit.”

In another case, Dr. Morris told of “an elderly woman dying of cancer.” She had been cantankerous and opinionated all her life, a very difficult personality. “But in the last two days of her life,” he says, “she changed completely. She became serene and was very good humored. There was no reason for her to still be alive. But her spirit obviously lived, even though her body, for all intent and purpose, had fulfilled its function. This case demonstrated to me, conclusively, that the spirit extends beyond physiological life. It was her spirit that kept her alive in the final days before her death, a spirit that could only be discerned in the transition from one state to another. All indications are that the spirit does exist and emerges at the end of life.”

Dr. Mary Skinner, also at Johns Hopkins, corroborated what Dr. Morris said. “Many dying patients,” she confirmed, “show they are imbued with some power or force that is not normally seen in people. It is a mysterious and fascinating thing.”

Patients returning from the hereafter find it difficult to explain in three-dimensional words what they experienced in the four-dimensional world they briefly contacted, but they all seem to agree that they would never again fear death.

Moderator: In the light of Christian Science there is nothing strange in connection with these experiences; they speak of the nowness and ever-presence of Life, and of ministering Love. This seeming mortal life with its picture of human birth and death is pure illusion. As Mrs. Eddy states (265:20), “The truth of being is perennial, and the error is unreal and obsolete.” If we then look at the marginal heading here to see what the error is that is “unreal and obsolete” we find it is “Mortal birth and death.”

With an understanding of God we can change mortality, but we can't change God who is Life, anymore than we can change the principle of mathematics. There is only one Ego, one “I,” and that is the I AM that is God. This one divine individuality, God, is infinitely reflected in all spiritual individualities. Therefore the I of you and of me and of everyone has to be God, which makes God the I AM that I Am. We must get the point that the divine individuality is never in any kind of limitation, but is simply reflected in all spiritual individuality. “Sin, sickness, and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality” (335:29). There can be no death since “immortal man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immortal man is coexistent and coeternal with that Mind” (336:9).

The instances Bessie has just related show a slight breaking through of this eternal life that belongs to man. As in mathematics we don't know as much about the figure 5 as the principle of mathematics knows about it. Just so, we don't know as much about life as the one divine Life, God, divine Principle, Love, knows about it.

HEREAFTER AS NOW

Daisy's Story

Sally: I would like to quote from the Journal of the American A.P.R. (1918, p. 375), concerning the case of Daisy Driden. It is a touching episode of how ten-year-old Daisy, in the last three days of her life was able to see and converse with a younger brother and other spirit entities, while seeing transient visions of the beyond. (Daisy was born September 9, 1854.)

On page 75:29 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states that “in the vestibule through which we pass from one dream to another dream, or when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those who have gone before. The one departing may whisper this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes aloud his rapture.”Daisy's story was compiled from her mother's diary as published by Ernesto Bozzano:

What was remarkable in Daisy's case of open vision was its unusual length and the clearness of her revelations. She seemed to be recovering during the two weeks before her death, but she steadily maintained that her departure was near. Four days before her death a relapse set in and she suffered greatly. After that, the pain passed and she became clairvoyant. This was noticed first by reason of a text from the Gospel of St. John, read to her by her father (who was a Methodist minister), which led her to remark that she hoped to return to console her parents. She added: “I'll ask Allis about it.”

Allis was her brother who had died of scarlet fever, age six, about seven months before. She waited a short time and then said: “Allis says I may go to you sometimes; he says it is possible, but you will not know when I am there. But I can speak to your thought.”

The mother writes: As I have said, Daisy lingered on for three days after the first agonizing twenty-four hours had passed. During these three days she lived in both worlds, as she expressed it. Two days before she left us the Sunday School superintendent came to see her. Daisy talked very freely about going, and sent a message by him to the Sunday School. When he was about to leave, he said: “Well, Daisy, you will soon be over the dark river.” After he had gone, she asked her father to explain what he meant by 'the dark river.' Her father tried to explain it, but