Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910)

The Discoverer, Founder, and Leader of Christian Science, and author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Born in Bow, New Hampshire, in 1821, Mary Baker Eddy was the youngest of the six children of Abigail and Mark Baker. From childhood, she suffered from poor health, although she attended local schools when well enough. Very soon she developed a strong interest in the biblical accounts of early Christian healing. In her discovery of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy found that healing the sick was an integral part of Christian service. Even in early childhood, healing played a role in Mary's life. Her family would bring ailing farm animals to her for healing.

In 1843, at the age of 22, she married George Washington Glover. Mary Baker Glover first came into touch with slavery in the South. Her husband owned some slaves and her sense of right revolted against the practice. After his death Mrs. Glover set free her husband’s slaves. Mrs. Glover continued to write on the subject of slavery, which was daily becoming a more and more burning question and was soon to culminate in the Civil War. She had made a brief experiment of opening a children’s school somewhat on the lines of the kindergarten system, but the times were not ready for this venture and she soon abandoned it. At this time, spiritualism and allied beliefs were stirring public thought. Mrs. Glover interested herself in these matters as she did in the question of slavery, and gradually won her way to definite convictions concerning spiritualism, mesmerism, and animal magnetism (later called hypnotism), convictions which she has recorded in her writings. She was widowed in less than a year, and her health worsened after the birth of her son.

In 1853, hoping to provide a home for her son, she married Dr. Daniel Patterson, a dentist. Daniel Patterson signed papers to that effect on their wedding day. However, he never followed through on his promise. Her symptoms worsened and plunged her into a deep depression. In October 1862 she became a patient of Phineas Quimby, a magnetic healer from Maine. She benefited temporarily by his treatment and his beliefs influenced her later thinking and writing although to what extent has been frequently disputed. The marriage proved unhappy, and the couple separated after 13 years, when Daniel deserted her. Seven years later, she sought and obtained a divorce on the grounds of his adultery.

During the 1840s and 1850s, she explored various systems of healing, including homeopathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism, to find health. Throughout this time, however, she found strength, solace, and hope in the Bible, which was her constant companion.

Her search culminated when, on February 1, 1866, she sustained serious internal injuries after a fall on an icy sidewalk. She remained unconscious through that night, and the physician called to treat her held out little hope for her recovery. Her condition worsening, on February 4, she asked for her Bible, and while reading an account of one of Jesus' healings, found herself suddenly well in a moment of profound spiritual insight. She felt that behind this healing lay spiritual laws, and she began a renewed study of the Bible to learn how she had been healed. By the end of 1866, she had gained the certainty that "all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon". By early 1867, she began to teach others the science of Christian healing, which she named Christian Science.
In 1875 she published the first edition of Science and Health, a complete statement of Christian Science.
In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy who, being in bad health, had been sent to her for treatment. She had healed him, had taken him through one of her classes, and had learned to trust him so thoroughly that she had placed many of her affairs in his charge. He proved a strong support to her during the formative years of establishing Christian Science. His death in 1882 was a severe blow to her, but she continued to teach, preach, and lecture on Christian Science.

She founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879, to "… reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing". Through her own prolific practice of Christian Science healing, she rejected the notion that the human mind was a healing agent. Instead, she maintained that healing came through the divine Mind, God. Central to such healing, she held, was regeneration and spiritual growth. "Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science," she writes in Rudimental Divine Science, adding, "The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin…" While Eddy was a highly controversial religious leader, author, and lecturer, thousands of people flocked to her teachings. She was supported by the approximately 800students, she had taught at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts between the years 1882 and 1889. These students spread across the country practicing healing in accordance with Eddy's teachings. Eddy authorized these students to list themselves as Christian Science Practitioners in the church's periodical, the Christian Science Journal. She also founded The Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine with articles about how to heal and testimonies of healing.

By 1900, newspapers and magazines were seeking her views on every conceivable topic, but she resisted public efforts to extol her personality, and tirelessly turned her followers away from reliance on her to reliance on God.

From 1880 to 1910, she wrote scores of articles on Christian Science; founded monthly and weekly periodicals and, in 1908, at the age of 87, established an award-wining international daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor.

On December 3, 1910, she passed on at the age of 89. She is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. As part of her legacy to the world, the practice of Christian healing has received renewed interest and attention. There are Churches of Christ, Scientist, in over 70 countries today.

In 1995, Eddy was recognized for her many achievements and inducted in the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2002, The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity opened to researchers, scholars, and the public, allowing access to hundreds of thousands of documents and artifacts. It housed one of the largest multi-disciplinary collections by and about an American woman.

The Mary Baker Eddy House is located at 12 Broad St. in Lynn, MA, within the Diamond District Historic District. The house is owned by Longyear Museum whose mission is to advance the understanding of the life and work of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer, Founder, and Leader of Christian Science.

Her Famous Quotations:

• True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection.
  
• Sin makes its own hell and goodness its own heaven.

Her Works:

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

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Baker_Eddy
2. http://www.endtime.org/intro/mbe.html
3. http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/ucbio_mary_baker_eddy.htm
4. http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blqueddy.htm
5. http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/pwwmh/ma53.htm
6. http://www.allaboutcults.org/mary-baker-eddy-faq.htm
7. http://www.essortment.com/all/whowasmarybak_rrym.htm
8. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761569507/Eddy_Mary_Baker.html
9. http://longyear.org/mbe.html