Mary Baker Eddy: reformer

Marceil DeLacy | from The Christian Science Journal

An incident that happened when Mary Baker Eddy was still a student is prophetic of the role she was later to play as a reformer. One day in 1842, when she was at Sanbornton Academy in New Hampshire, an insane man escaped from a nearby asylum and came into the schoolyard. He was violently waving a club and scaring the students. Everyone but Mary ran back into the schoolhouse. While the others watched through the window, Mary walked straight up to the man whose club was raised over her head, took his free hand, and walked him to the gate, and he left peacefully (see Sybil Wilbur, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1976), pp. 33–34).

Later this man burst into the Baker home, where the family was praying together. He went to Mr. Baker, took the Bible from him, and handed it to Mary, saying, “Here! You are the one to read from God’s word” (Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1998), p. 9). The strict Calvinist religion of Mary’s father didn’t permit women to read the Bible aloud in church or invite them to offer the prayer at family devotions (see Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, originally published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), pp. 6, 23). Years later, Mary would found a church in which women were free to participate equally with men, a church emphasizing God’s healing power.

The life of virtually every great religious reformer follows a pattern known as the hero’s journey.

The life of virtually every great religious reformer follows a pattern known in mythology as the hero’s journey. The hero leaves the comfort and security of home to embark on an adventure into unknown territory. During this period in the “wilderness,” he or she faces tests that require a mastery beyond anything learned before. Through awakening to a higher source of wisdom—which Christians call God—victory is won, enlightenment achieved, and the hero returns to the world transformed, with something of value to give to others.

Mrs. Eddy’s life follows this pattern in many ways. After leaving her childhood home, she was widowed in the first year of marriage and separated from her only child; she suffered constant health problems, and was deserted by her second husband. The turning point came when she experienced a miraculous recovery from a life-threatening injury after turning to her Bible for comfort. She became convinced that Biblical healings accomplished through God’s power, healings that defy any known laws of physics or medicine, have a scientific explanation. Through prayer and study of the Bible, she discovered this explanation, which restored not only her own health but that of many others who sought her help.

Now in midlife, after years of struggle in the “wilderness,” she had finally slain the dragon of chronic illness and gained deeper insight into the nature of God and the universe. What she chose to do with this knowledge is what put her on the map as a public figure. In her autobiography she writes: “The motive of my earliest labors has never changed. It was to relieve the sufferings of humanity by a sanitary system that should include all moral and religious reform” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 30). One of her sisters who had married well offered her a home with financial security and good social connections if she would give up her interest in this new healing method. Mrs. Eddy chose instead to endure several more years of hardship, tirelessly working and sacrificing to give to the world the benefit of what she was learning.

The world, however, didn’t readily welcome what she had to offer. The patriarchal religious establishment wasn’t inclined to believe that God would reveal anything of great importance through a woman. An incident that happened when she was lecturing in Rhode Island gives an example of the kind of healing work she did and the reception it received. While she was there, she visited the home of a pregnant woman who was suffering from a condition that resulted from an injury received from a surgical operation when her last child was born. She’d been told that it would be impossible for her to give birth to another child. The physicians had given her up; she was so close to death that clothes had already been laid out for her burial. Mrs. Eddy stood by her side and prayed. In about fifteen minutes the sick woman got up from her bed and dressed herself. She was well. Her child was later born safely and weighed twelve pounds. The mother later wrote to Mrs. Eddy, “I never before suffered so little in childbirth.” Instead of rejoicing in this woman’s recovery, the doctors and clergy in that town had the notices for Mrs. Eddy’s next lecture torn down and refused to let her speak in their halls and churches (see Retrospection and Introspection, p. 40).

To pursue her goal of relieving suffering in the world, she would have to start a church of her own.

She had hoped her discovery would be welcomed by the already-established churches. But it became clear that in order to pursue her goal of relieving suffering in the world, she would have to start a church of her own. What she founded was, in her words, “a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master [Christ Jesus], which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17).

If she received so much opposition, what accounts for her popularity?

The same thing that stirred up the opposition. Her healing work. Some historians have tried to explain the phenomenon of Mrs. Eddy’s rise to prominence by examining her psychological profile or the political, social, and intellectual climate of the times. While these factors are all very interesting, it’s impossible to explain how she captured public attention and attracted such a large following so quickly if her healing work is discounted.

In a message to her Church in 1901, she said: “Had not my first demonstrations of Christian Science or metaphysical healing exceeded that of other methods, they would not have arrested public attention and started the great Cause that to-day commands the respect of our best thinkers. It was that I healed the deaf, the blind, the dumb, the lame, the last stages of consumption, pneumonia, etc., and restored the patients in from one to three interviews, that started the inquiry, What is it?” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 17).

No one who had witnessed her work as a healer could deny its effectiveness.

Although opponents continually tried to discredit her, no one who had witnessed her work as a healer could deny its effectiveness. While many clergy excused a lack of healing ability by saying this was a special gift of early Christians, not meant to be repeated today, Mrs. Eddy often quoted these words of Jesus from the Gospel of John: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also” (John 14:12). She wrote, “It is not well to imagine that Jesus demonstrated the divine power to heal only for a select number or for a limited period of time, since to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good” (Science and Health, p. 494).

This statement is from her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which was first published in 1875 and has now sold over nine million copies in seventeen languages. After thoroughly explaining her healing method, the book ends with one hundred pages of testimonies by people cured of all kinds of diseases––organic, functional, hereditary—as well as of mental illness, alcoholism, and many other complaints, just through what they learned from reading the book.

Gradually, her radical ideas have been gaining respect from thinkers beyond the many whose lives and families have been transformed by the practice of her metaphysical system of treating disease. For example, as discoveries in physics call into question long-held theories as to the nature of matter, Mrs. Eddy’s denial of matter’s existence demands new attention.

She denied the existence of matter?

Yes. One step along her path to this conclusion was her exploration of alternative therapies, particularly homeopathy. When she saw people cured by taking pills or potions containing virtually no medicinal properties, she realized that it was the patients’ faith in the medication that cured them, not the content of the drug itself. The healings of Jesus in the Bible confirmed for her that the most powerful healing agent is Mind—not a personal mind or ego but the divine and infinite Mind, synonymous with God.

If, as the Bible teaches, God is Mind and Spirit, and man (male and female) is God’s image, then, she reasoned, we are not material but spiritual. When treatment based on this understanding results in cures that defy physical laws and are considered medically impossible, it becomes obvious that matter isn’t the solid substance it appears to be. There must be a more fundamental substance and some nonphysical law governing creation.

What was her view of the creator?

She popularized the term Father-Mother as a name for God.

Recognizing the feminine aspect of God, she popularized the term Father-Mother as a name for God. She also used seven gender-neutral terms to define the creator—Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love. Many who’ve been turned off by a tribal, manlike God in whose name so many atrocities have been committed over the centuries have found in Mrs. Eddy’s teachings a more inclusive view of God that has restored their faith.

Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose work for women’s rights is so well documented here in this park building, Mrs. Eddy was raised in a Calvinist family in the early 1800s. In later years, both these women recounted incidents during childhood when they were made physically ill by certain elements of a religious dogma that taught that God is a stern and punishing male, saving a select few and damning the rest (see Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), p. 43; Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection, p. 13).

While loving the church, Mrs. Eddy protested against the harsh doctrine of predestination. It was through her understanding of God as a loving Father-Mother, wholly good, neither creating nor allowing any evil or disease, that she was able to duplicate the healings of Scripture.

Mrs. Eddy turned her scientific inquiry toward reforming the teachings of the church.

Both Mrs. Eddy and Mrs. Stanton were drawn to the logic of scientific inquiry. Mrs. Stanton saw science as the antidote to what she considered arbitrary religious dogma and directed her energy toward reform outside the church. Mrs. Eddy, on the other hand, turned her scientific inquiry toward reforming the teachings of the church. She approached religion with the same goal a scientist has—to understand, explain, and prove through practical application the laws that govern creation. What she discovered gives her a pivotal role in redefining the relation between science and religion.

Did these women know each other?

Being public figures during the same period, they were surely aware of each other and had mutual acquaintances, but apparently never met. One acquaintance they had in common was the well-known poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, whom Mrs. Eddy cured of consumption in 1868 (see Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 54). In 1888, when Mrs. Eddy spoke in Chicago, Mrs. Stanton’s longtime co-worker Susan B. Anthony was in the audience of some four thousand people (see Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, p. 413, n. 9).

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was another reformer of that period who was aware of Mrs. Eddy. In an interview published in the New York American near the end of both these women’s lives, Miss Barton is reported as saying that “she looked upon Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy as the one person, regardless of sex, living to-day, who has done the greatest good for her fellow-creatures” (Viola Rodgers, “Christian Science Most Potent Factor in Religious Life, Says Clara Barton,” New York American, Jan. 6, l908, reprinted in The Christian Science Journal, February 1908, p. 696).

What is Mary Baker Eddy’s legacy?

She was elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995 in recognition of the lasting impact of her lifework. I would like to summarize briefly her impact in four major categories: journalism, religion, medicine, and science.

Journalism

The Christian Science Monitor, an international daily newspaper, was founded by Mrs. Eddy in l908. The paper is highly respected throughout the world and has won many awards including several Pulitzer Prizes.

Religion

She was instrumental in changing attitudes about the role of prayer in healing, the role of women in church, the nature of man (male and female) as immortal and unfallen, and the nature of God as Love, the divine power and presence operating in our lives rather than a man looking down on us from somewhere up in the sky. In a poll taken in 1993 by the Siena Research Institute here in New York State, Mrs. Eddy topped the list as the most influential American woman in religion.

Medicine

Her book Science and Health lays the foundation for a wholly spiritual approach to health care. Her groundbreaking work in healing without drugs, through prayer alone, has led to a revival of Christian healing as a legitimate form of health care.

Science

As if it wasn’t enough to challenge the religious establishment of her day, she also took on the scientific establishment and the teaching that matter is solid substance. Her discovery that the fundamental substance of being is Spirit, not matter, opened up a whole new frontier of possibilities that we’ve barely begun to explore.

A few years ago, I heard a lecture by a physicist who spent about three quarters of his talk preparing the audience what for he apparently thought would come as a shock to us nonphysicists: that matter is an illusion and all is consciousness or the Mind of God (Fred Alan Wolf, “Quantum Physics and the Mind of God,” talk given in Seattle, Washington, May 10, l994).

When he asked if there were any questions, a man stood up and asked, “Have you ever heard of Mary Baker Eddy? She said these things over one hundred years ago.”

Now that you know a little about the life and works of this great reformer, if you hear people questioning the reality of matter, protesting against a patriarchal monopoly on God, discussing the effectiveness of prayer as a healing agent, applying the term science to the study of religion, or declaring the substance and creator of the universe to be Mind, it might occur to you, as it did to that man, to ask people who talk about these things if they’ve ever heard of a woman named Mary Baker Eddy.