Rev. Mary Baker Eddy

From the The Granite Monthly, 1896, by


The Reverend Mary Baker Eddy, discoverer and founder of the system of religious healing known as Christian Science, and author of the text-book on that subject, – “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures” (which has already reached its one hundred and tenth edition), – was born in the town of Bow, adjoining Concord, N.H. Her parents were Mark and Abigail Baker, old citizens of that place, and of Scotch and English extraction.

When she was a child they removed to Tilton. She numbers among her ancestors Sir John MacNeil of Scotland, Gen. John MacNeil, the New Hampshire general who won renown in the War of 1812, and Gen. Henry Knox of Revolutionary fame.

The foundation of her education was laid by a memorable woman, Mrs. Sarah J. Bodwell Lane, a teacher at the Ipswich seminary, and by Mr. Courser, of the Sanbornton Bridge academy. Their training was supplemented by the tutelage of Professor Sanborn, author of “Sanborn’s Grammar, “ and by that of her brother, Hon. Albert Baker, as well as by years of self-culture in reading and study. Among her studies were natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, Blair’s rhetoric, Whately’s logic, Locke’s metaphysics, Watt’s “On the Mind,” moral science, and somewhat of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French.

Her pious parents being members of Dr. Bouton’s church, Mrs. Eddy was christened in Concord by the Rev. Nathaniel Bouton, D.D., pastor of the First Congregational church. When alluding to Dr. Bouton and his family and to his successor, Rev. Dr. Ayer, no denominational prejudice was manifested by her, but much tenderness and reverence. At the age of about twelve years she united with the Congregational Trinitarian church, of Tilton, continuing her membership for about forty years, and until 1879, when she established her own church in Boston, The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

The distinguished Unitarian, Rev. A.P. Peabody, D.D., while chaplain at Harvard University, and occasionally supplying Mrs. Eddy’s pulpit in Boston, in a letter to her wrote, – “Do not hesitate to call on me for any assistance that I can give you. I enjoy speaking to your people; they are good listeners and earnest seekers.”

Before leaving her native state, she communicated to her pastor the new and more spiritual sense that she entertained of the power of Christianity, and its effect in healing the sick. Prior to requesting a letter of dismission from his church she presented to her pastor, for examination, her published works. After a careful perusal of them, she received from him the following recommendation to an evangelical church:

JAN. 13th, 1875

This certifies that Mrs. Mary M. Glover is a member of this Church in good and regular standing. At her own request, she is dismissed from this Church and recommended to any evangelical Church in Lynn.

When received there her particular connection with us will cease.

THEODORE C. PRATT,

Pastor Cong’l Church, Tilton, N.H.

In 1894 her students and adherents erected a beautiful church edifice, corner of Norway and Falmouth streets, in the fashionable Back Bay district of Boston, at a cost of over two hundred thousand dollars, as a testimonial to Mrs. Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science. In the year 1895 they made her pastor emeritus of this church. She donated the ground on which this edifice stands, valued at $40,000.

After this fine building was completed, the Christian Science board of directors, in behalf of the church, presented to Mrs. Eddy their superb edifice, but she gratefully declined to accept the gift!

It was the intention of her church to receive her formally on her first visit to Boston after the cathedral was finished, and, in grand procession, with chiming of bells, to escort her to the church. Suspecting their purpose, she went quietly and unexpectedly to Boston, accompanied by two of her students, and while they remained in the vestibule, entered the auditorium, passed to the platform, and, kneeling, bowed her head upon the steps in silent prayer. Mrs. Eddy uniformly and emphatically rebukes man-worship; discouraging in every instance the genuine outbursts of homage that her grateful students would lavish upon her.

Under various pen names, in her earlier years, she wrote much for the press and for the leading magazines, both in the North and South. At the commencement of our Civil War Mrs. Eddy delivered a lecture on “North and South,” at the Colby University, Waterville, Me., that Professor Sheldon highly complimented through the press. Recently the president of that institution, Rev. Nathaniel Butler, in a lecture delivered in Boston, said, “It may be that the Christian Scientists are working out a great fundamental truth for us.”

In 1843 she was united in marriage to Col. George W. Glover of Charleston, S.C., and after his death to Dr. Asa G. Eddy , of Chelsea, Mass., who died in 1882.

Early in life Mrs. Eddy became actively interested in many religious and social organizations and movements. She is now a life member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Boston, Mass.; the Society for the Prevention of Vice, New York; the Victoria Institute, London, England; and a life member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. One of the distinguished members of the D.A.R. recently presented her with the insignia of this society in diamonds and a large ruby, a badge said to be even more costly and beautiful than that of their president, the late Mrs. Harrison, wife of President Harrison.

Prior to her discovery of her system of Metaphysical Healing, Mrs. Eddy had studied and experimented in curing disease by the homoeopathic system. She continued this practice for several years, but never received a diploma as she refused to face the horrors of the dissecting-room; and at that time no woman had been admitted to a medical society or to the practice of medicine. Mrs. Eddy was never at any time, as has been asserted by persons desiring to misrepresent her, a student of the late magnetic doctor, P.P. Quimby, but has expressed both publicly and privately her absolute disapproval of magnetic practice. She knew nothing of Christian Science at the time of his death, as her discovery was not made until some time thereafter.

In 1867 Mrs. Eddy began teaching her first student in Christian Science Mind healing. In 1881 she opened and became president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, where she personally taught upward of four thousand students. In 1876 she founded and became president of the first Christian Scientist association, and subsequently of the National Christian Scientist association. She established in 1883 the Christian Science Journal, a monthly magazine devoted to Christian Science topics, and for several years was its proprietor and editor. She is the author of a number of books pertaining to Christian Science, among which we mention, in addition to the denominational text-book above referred to, – “Retrospection and Introspection” (1891); “Unity of Good and Unreality of Evil” (1887); “People’s Idea of God” (1886); “Christian Healing” (1886); “Rudimental Divine Science” (1891); “No and Yes” (1891); “Christ and Christmas,” a poem, illustrated (1893); “Pulpit and Press” (1895); and a “Church Manual of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass.” (1895).

1. As adherents of Truth, we take the Scriptures for our guide to Eternal Life.

2. We acknowledge and adore one Supreme God. We acknowledge His Son, and the Holy Ghost, and man as the divine image and likeness.

3. We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin, and that sin and suffering are not eternal.

4. We acknowledge the atonement as the efficacy, and evidence of divine Love, of man’s unity with God, and the great merits of the Way-shower.

5. We acknowledge the way of salvation demonstrated by Jesus to be the power of Truth over all error, sin, sickness, and death; and the resurrection of human faith and understanding to seize the great possibilities and living energies of divine Life.

6. We solemnly promise to strive, watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Jesus Christ, to love one another, and to be meek, merciful, just and pure.

In 1878 Mrs. Eddy accepted a call to the Baptist Tabernacle pulpit, Boston. She preached with great success to crowded houses and remained with them until her own church was organized.

INCIDENTS IN MRS. EDDY’S LIFE.

About the year 1870, before Mr. Charles Slade’s door in Chelsea, Mass., there stopped an emaciated, pale-faced cripple, strapped to crutches. His elbows were stiff, and lower limbs so contracted his feet touched not the ground. Mrs. Eddy was there, and gave him some scrip.

A few weeks thereafter, sitting in her carriage, Mrs. Slade noticed a smart-looking man, having that same face, vending some wares on the grounds where General Butler held parade. She drove to where he stood. Their gaze met, and simultaneously they exclaimed, “Are you that man?” and “Where is that woman?” Then followed the explanation, he narrating that after leaving her house he hobbled to the next door, and was given permission to enter and lie down. In about an hour he revived, and found his arms and limbs loosed – he could stand erect and walk naturally. All pain, stiffness, and contraction were gone, and he added, “I am now a well man, and I am that man.”

Mrs. Slade then answered his question as to “that” woman, and afterwards narrated to Mrs. Eddy the circumstances connected with his recovery, but not until she had inquired of her, If she thought that terrible-looking cripple, whom they both saw, was healed? To which Mrs. Eddy quickly answered, “I do believe that he was restored to health.” Later, on being asked by her students as to how she healed him, Mrs. Eddy simply said, – “When I looked on that man, my heart gushed with unspeakable pity and prayer. After that, he passed out of my thought until being informed by Mrs. Slade of his sudden restoration.”

About the year 1867, as Mrs. Eddy sat alone at her quiet occupation in an outside room opening on a garden and porch, the door was suddenly burst open, and an escaped maniac dashed into the room. Her quiet, truthful gaze momentarily met his wild glare; then he fiercely seized a chair to hurl at her head. She spoke to him; he dropped the chair, approached her, and, pointing upward, exclaimed, “Are you from there?” The next moment he was kneeling before her with his head pressed hard into his hands. She uttered not a word; but those of our readers who are Christian Scientists can apprehend a little of her inspiration at that moment. Soon the poor maniac gave a deep groan, then he looked up into her face with a new wildness – the astonishment of sanity – and breathed out, “that terrible weight has gone off the top of my head.”

“Yes,” she answered, figuratively, “I have anointed you with the oil of gladness.” Some conversation followed, in the course of which she learned that he was talented and scholarly, the beloved son of a cultured and wealthy family residing on Beacon street, Boston. He left the house clothed in his right mind.

Several years after, in the midst of pressing work, there was announced a caller to whom she felt obliged to return the request to call again. On the receipt of this message from the attendant, the gentleman hesitated a moment, then requested her to ask Mrs. Eddy if she remembered the foregoing incident, and to say, as he was simply passing through the place on his way to a distant city, and had an hour to spare, he had come to tell her of that maniac, if she would like to hear about him. This summons brought her to the parlors. And to the fine-looking gentleman who stood before her she expressed heartfelt interest in the case which he had come to report. His reply was, “I am that man”; and she recognized her “callers” to be identical.

“And now,” concluded he, “I am a married man, and instead of a shattered family, with husband and father in the insane asylum the best years of his life, when most needed by his loved ones, we are all together, useful, happy, and our children are being educated as they should be.”

No woman has more real friends than Mrs. Eddy, and perhaps no character is held in higher estimation in the nineteenth century. As her biographer, we deem it safe to say that, judging of the future by the past, this estimation will increase in proportion as her character and life work are understood.

“Such is the tale of one of the thousands of lives that have come, either directly or indirectly, in contact with this our Mother, as we endearingly term her, inasmuch as she has been the one in this century to show us the true nature and present possibility of Christ healing the sick. Thus has she turned everywhere to the sick, the desolate, the anguished, and comforted those who were of no use to themselves or to any one else.”

When a little girl of seven years, she would steal out of doors on a cold November evening and cuddle down by the pen where her father’s hogs were squealing, to sing them to sleep. Did not this unselfishness foreshadow her future life work?

In addition to her beautiful home on the outskirts of Concord, she owns a fine residence on Commonwealth avenue, Boston, and a fine estate with ornamental grounds at Roslindale, near Boston. In answer to the inquiry of an official, if she was a millionaire, she replied, “No: I will never own one million’s worth of property while so many others are poor! I could have been worth many millions of money, – my college alone was an annual income of $40,000, – but I manage to give away enough to balance my account with conscience.”

She is an exceedingly busy person, standing as she does at the head of the movement founded by her, which has now reached such vast proportions that it may be said to be a great army of teachers, healers, and students, extending to every part of this country and many places in Europe. To have charge of such an army and carry on with it a vast personal correspondence involves almost incalculable labor, patience, and wisdom. With the zeal and devotion of one committed wholly to a great and holy work, she gave up society, and stands faithfully and unflinchingly at her post. Her neighbors, passing by her quiet and peaceful retreat, little dream of the amount of work going on there.

She has many friends yearning to see her. Her secretary receives letters from strangers in California and Europe, asking him to let them know at what date Mrs. Eddy will speak to her church in Boston. But generally she declines to name the time, and repeats this Scripture, – “Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

Mrs. Eddy writes, – “It has always been a cardinal point of my teaching that students shall never, under any circumstances, mentally trespass upon the rights or thoughts of another. But they shall pursue their mental ministrations very sacredly. They shall never touch the human thought save to issues of truth; never to take away rights, but only to aid in removing the wrongs of mankind. Otherwise, they diminish if not destroy their ability to heal in Christian Science.” She teaches them also to avoid mesmerism, mind cure, spiritualism, hypnotism, theosophy, occultism, and all other systems based upon the theory that one human mind can or should control another human mind. She points them to God as the one controlling Mind, and only as they are obedient to Him, and reflect the Christ character are they true Christian Scientists.

“In her system of therapeutics she classifies disease as mental, in the sense that, while disease is indeed real and painful, as long as mind assents to it, yet through a sufficient understanding and realization of the all-presence and all-power of the Divine Mind, it can be overcome. And the fact that it can be overcome through Mind alone, as thousands of Christian Scientists are daily demonstrating, is the evidence of its mental origin.”

The number of Mrs. Eddy’s adherents is variously estimated at this date from three to four hundred thousand, but no attempt at statistics has yet been made. There are about four hundred churches and societies holding regular Sunday services, one hundred and thirty of which are chartered; thirty chartered Christian Science institutes for the teaching of Christian Science and healing of disease (these latter located in the larger cities); and a large number of reading-rooms for the dissemination of Christian Science literature, etc. The total membership of the “Mother Church” in Boston is 6,000 at the present time and rapidly increasing. The entire movement continues to make fast headway, and its influence for good is largely felt.

Mrs. Eddy communicates the following interesting letter from a college classmate of her brother:

Ex-Governor Moody Currier

She writes, – “Out of the large correspondence commending my labors, I present to my biographer the inclosed letter from one of New Hampshire’s noblest sons – ex-Gov. Moody Currier. It has the special merit of being free from preconceived views; it breathes the inborn strength of our Granite state; it kindles anew the fires of religious freedom, lighting an illustrious life, and lifting the shadows of over three-score years and ten.”

MANCHESTER, N.H., August 17, 1895

My Dear Mrs. Eddy: Some days since, I had the pleasure of receiving by express two nice volumes, containing your card, showing that I am indebted to you for the very welcome present, for which I most heartily thank you. From a hasty examination I am sure I shall receive much satisfaction in their further perusal and study.

It gives me great pleasure to find your system so free from mystical creeds and theological dogmas. Every theory of philosophy or religion, in order to stand the scientific criticism of the present day, must be founded upon the eternal laws of God. The original method of your teachings reminds me very forcibly of the characteristic manner of your lamented brother, Albert, who thoroughly despised every appearance of sham and pretence in the pretended teachers of mankind.

I wish to congratulate you upon the broad and independent foundation on which you are now building your great work, and trust that your fame and renown may last as long as the principles you teach.

Very sincerely yours,

Moody Currier.

MRS. EDDY UNFOLDS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.

At the request of the editor of this popular magazine, I have written for its columns this bit on the subject of my doctrine:

Christian Science begins with the first commandment of the Hebrew Decalogue, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It goes on in perfect unity with Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, and in that age culminates in the Revelation of St. John, who while on earth and in the flesh, like ourselves, beheld “a new heaven and a new earth,” – the spiritual universe, whereof Christian Science now bears testimony.

Our Master said, “The works that I do ye shall do also,” and “The kingdom of God is within you.” This makes practical all His words and works. As the ages advance in spirituality, Christian Science will be seen to depart from the trend of other Christian denominations in nowise, except by increase of spirituality.

My first plank in the platform of Christian Science is as follows: “There is no life, truth, substance, or intelligence in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness; hence man is spiritual, and not material.”

I am a strict Theist – believe in one God, and one Christ or Messiah.

Science is neither a law of matter nor of man. It is the unerring manifesto of Mind, the law of God being its divine Principle. Who dare say that matter or mortals can evolve Science? Whence, then is it, if not from the divine Source and the contemporary of Christianity, so far in advance of human knowledge that mortals must work for the discovery of even a portion of it? Science translates Mind, God, to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit. It absolutely refutes the amalgamation, transmigration, absorption, or annihilation of individuality. It shows the impossibility of transmitting human ills, or evil, from one individual to another, – that all true thoughts revolve in their own orbits – they come from God and return to Him; and untruths belong not to His creation, therefore, they are null and void. Christian Science has no peer, no competitor, for it dwelleth in Him besides whom “there is none other.”

That Christian Science is Christian, those who have demonstrated it according to the rules of its divine Principle, together with the sick, the lame, the deaf, and blind healed by it, have proven to a waiting world. He who has not tested it is incompetent to condemn it, and he who is a willing sinner cannot demonstrate it.

A falling apple suggested to Newton more than the simple fact cognized by the senses, to which it seemed to fall by reason of its own ponderosity; but the primal cause, or Mind-force, invisible to material sense, lay concealed in the treasure-troves of Science. True, Newton named it gravitation, having learned so much; but Science, demanding more, pushes the question, Whence or what is the power back of gravitation, – the Intelligence that manifests power? Is pantheism true? Does mind “sleep in the mineral, or dream in the animal, and wake in man?” Christianity answers this question. The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demonstrated a divine Intelligence that subordinates so-called material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves obey this Intelligence. Was it Mind or matter that spake in creation, “and it was done”? The answer is self-evident, and the command remains, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

What is the Me spoken of in the first commandment? It must be Mind, for matter is not the Christian’s God, and is not intelligent. Matter cannot even talk, and the serpent, Satan, the first talker in its behalf, lied! Reason and revelation declare that God is both noumena and phenomena – the first and only Cause. The universe, including man, is not a result of atomic action, material force, or energy; it is not organized dust. God, Spirit, Mind, are terms synonymous for the one God, whose reflection is creation. All must be Mind and Mind’s ideas; since, according to natural science, God, Spirit, could not change its species and evolve matter.

These facts enjoin the first commandment, and knowledge of them makes man spiritually minded. St. Paul writes, “For to be carnally minded Is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” This knowledge came to me in an hour of great need; and I give it to you as death-bed testimony to the day star that dawned on the night of material sense. This knowledge is practical, for it wrought my immediate recovery from an injury caused by an accident, and pronounced fatal by the physicians. On the third day thereafter I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix: 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense, and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I before enjoyed. That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit, this Life being the sole reality of existence. I learned that mortal thought evolves a subjective state which it names matter, thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit. Per contra, Mind and man are immortal; and knowledge gained from mortal sense is illusion, error, the opposite of Truth, – therefore it cannot be true. A knowledge of both good and evil (when good is God, and God is all) is impossible. Speaking of the origin of evil, the Master said, “When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” God warned man not to believe the talking serpent, or rather the allegory describing it. The Nazarite prophet declared that his followers should handle serpents; that is, put down all subtle falsities or illusions, and thus destroy any supposed effect arising from false claims exercising their supposed power on the mind and body of man, against his holiness and health.

That there is but one God or Life, one Cause, and one effect, is the multum in parvo of Christian Science; and to my understanding it is the heart of Christianity, the religion that Jesus taught and demonstrated. In Divine Science it is found that matter is a phase of error, and that neither really exists, since God is Truth, and All in all. Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, in its direct application to human needs, confirms this conclusion.

Science, understood, translates matter into Mind, rejects all other theories of causation, restores the spiritual and original meaning of the Scriptures, and explains the teachings and life of our Lord. It is religion’s “new tongue,” with “signs following,” spoken of by St. Mark. It gives God’s infinite meaning to mankind, healing the sick, casting out evil, and raising the spiritually dead. Christianity is Christlike only as it reiterates the Word, repeats the works, and manifests the spirit of Christ.

Jesus’ only medicine was omnipotent and omniscient Mind. As omni is from the Latin word meaning all, this medicine is all-power, and omniscience means as well, all-science. The sick are more deplorably situated than the sinful, if the sick cannot trust God for help, and the sinful can. If God created drugs good, they are not poisonous; if He could create them bad, then they should never be used; and if He created drugs for medical purposes, why did Jesus not employ them and recommend them to the sick?

No human hypotheses, whether in philosophy, medicine, or religion, can survive the wreck of time; but whatever is of God hath life abiding in it, and ultimately will be known as self-evident truth, as demonstrable as mathematics. Each successive period of progress is a period more humane and spiritual. 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.

The agriculturist ponders the history of a seed, and believes that his crops come from the seedling and the loam, even when the Scripture declares, “He made every plant of the field before it was in the earth.” The scientist asks, Whence came the first seed, and what made the soil? Was it molecules, or material atoms? Whence came the infinitesimals, from infinite Mind or from matter? If from matter, how did matter originate? Was it self-existent? Matter is not intelligent, and thus able to evolve or create itself. It is the very opposite of Spirit, or intelligent, self-creative, and infinite Mind. The belief of mind in matter is Pantheism. Natural history shows that neither a genus nor species produces its opposite. God is All in all. What can be more than All? Nothing; and this is just what I call matter, nothing. Spirit, God has no antecedent; and God’s subsequent is the spiritual cosmos. The phrase, “express image,” in the common version of Hebrews ii:3 is, in the Greek Testament, character.

The Scriptures name God as good, and the Saxon term for God is also Good. From this premise comes the logical conclusion that God is naturally and divinely infinite Good. How, then can this conclusion change, or be changed, to mean that Good is evil, or the creator of evil? What can there be besides Infinity? Nothing! Therefore the Science of Good calls evil nothing. In Divine Science the term God, Good, as Spirit are synonymous. That God, Good, creates evil, or aught that can result in evil, – or that Spirit creates its opposite, named matter, – are conclusions that destroy their premise, and prove themselves invalid. Here is where Christian Science sticks to its text; and other systems of religion abandon their own logic. Here also is found the pith of the basal statement, the cardinal point in Christian Science, that matter and evil (including all inharmony, sin, disease, death) are unreal. Mortals accept natural science, wherein no species ever produces its opposite. Then why not accept Divine Science on this ground? Since the Scriptures maintain this fact by parable and proof, asking, “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?”

According to reason and revelation, evil and matter are negation, for evil signifies the absence of Good, God, though God is ever present, and matter claims something besides God, when God is really All. Creation, evolution, or manifestation, – being in and of Spirit, Mind, and all that really is – they must be spiritual and mental. This is Science, and is susceptible of proof.

But, say you, is a stone spiritual? To erring material sense, No! but to unerring spiritual sense it is a manifestation of Mind, a type of spiritual Substance, “the substance of things hoped for.” Mortals can know a stone as substance, only by first admitting that it is substantial. Take away the mortal sense of substance, and the stone itself would disappear, only to reappear in the spiritual sense thereof. Matter can neither see, hear, feel, taste, nor smell, having no sensation of its own. Perception by the five personal senses is mental, and dependent on the beliefs that mortals entertain. Destroy the belief that you can walk, and volition ceases, for muscles cannot move without Mind. Matter takes no cognizance of matter. In dreams things are only what mortal mind makes them; and the phenomena of mortal life are as dreams; and this so-called life is a dream, soon told. In proportion as mortals turn from this mortal and material dream to the true sense of reality, everlasting Life will be found to be the only Life. That death does not destroy the beliefs of the flesh, our Master proved to His doubting disciple, Thomas. Also he demonstrated that Divine Science alone can overbear materiality and mortality, and this great truth was shown by his ascension after death, whereby he rose above the illusion of matter.

The first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” suggests the inquiry, What meaneth this Me, Spirit or matter? It certainly does not signify a graven idol, and must mean Spirit. Then the commandment means: “Thou shalt recognize no Intelligence or Life in matter; and find neither pleasure nor pain therein. The Master’s practical knowledge of this grand verify, together with His divine Love, healed the sick and raised the dead. He literally annulled the claims of physique and of physical law, by the superiority of the higher law; hence His declaration: “These signs shall follow them that believe… If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

Do you believe His words? I do, and that His promise was perpetual. Had it been applicable only to His immediate disciples, the pronoun would be you, not they. The purpose of his life-work touches universal humanity. At another time he prayed, not for the twelve only, but “for as many as shall believe through their word.”

The Christ-healing was practiced, even before the Christian era: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There is, however, no analogy between Christian Science and spiritualism, or any speculative theory.

In 1867, I taught the first student in Christian Science. Since that date I have known of but fourteen deaths in the ranks of my about five thousand students. The census since 1875 (the date of the first publication of my work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”) shows that longevity has increased. Daily letters inform me that a perusal of my volume is healing the writers of chronic and acute diseases that had defied medical skill.

Surely, the people of the Occident know that esoteric magic and Oriental barbarisms will neither flavor Christianity, nor advance health and length of days.

Miracles are no infraction of God’s laws; on the contrary, they fulfill them; for they are the signs following Christianity, whereby matter is proven powerless, and subordinate to Mind. Christians, like students in mathematics, should be working up to those higher rules of Life which Jesus taught and proved. Do we really understand the Divine Principle of Christianity before we prove it, in at least, some feeble demonstration thereof, according to Jesus’ example in healing the sick? Should we adopt the simple addition in Christian Science, and doubt its higher rules, or despair of ultimately reaching them, even though failing at first to demonstrate all the possibilities of Christianity?

St. John spiritually discerned and revealed the sum total of transcendentalism. He saw the real earth and heaven. They were spiritual, not material; and they were without pain, sin, or death. Death was not the door to this heaven. The gates thereof he declared inlaid with pearl, – likening them to the priceless understanding of man’s real existence to be recognized here and now.

The great Wayshower illustrated Life unconfined, uncontaminated, untrammelled by matter. He proved the superiority of Mind over the flesh, opened the door to the captive, and enabled man to demonstrate the law of Life, which St. Paul declares “hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

The stale saying that Christian Science “is neither Christian nor science,” is to-day the fossil of wisdomless wit, weakness, and superstition. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

Take courage, dear reader, for any seeming mysticism around realism is explained in the Scripture, – “there went up a mist from the earth,” [matter]; and the mist of materialism will vanish, as we approach spirituality, the realm of reality, cleanse our lives in Christ’s righteousness, bathe in the baptism of Spirit, and awake in His likeness.




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