“…unspeakable pity and prayer” — Mrs. Eddy’s deep desire to help and heal humanity

From Mary Baker Eddy: A New Look by pages 54, 56, 127


A 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.

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.

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.




Print this page


Share via email


Send this as a text from your phone