Article October 29, 1927 Issue

Recent articles in the News having shown the need for...

Judge Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts,—Amesbury

News

Recent articles in the News having shown the need for authentic information in Amesbury with regard to certain points in the history of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, the following information is furnished from dependable sources. Mrs. Eddy came to Amesbury in the fall of 1867, not in the summer of 1866. She came from Lynn, Massachusetts, where she had lived since the fall of 1864; she did not come from Augusta, Maine. She gained her inspiration for the discovery of Christian Science from the Bible and from religious experiences and training which began in her childhood, not from contact with a magnetic healer. She never was a medium or spiritualist, and never was interested in mediumship or spiritualism. Some of her friends were spiritualists, just as some of them had other interests, but she gave no more attention to spiritualism than she did to other subjects which were of general interest at that time. Mrs. Eddy's teaching of Christian Science and her writing on this subject did not begin at Amesbury, but had begun previously at Lynn.

Mrs. Eddy's sojourn at Amesbury was divided into two periods. She was there for about a year from the fall of 1867. After about a year at Stoughton, she was in Amesbury again from the fall of 1869 until the late spring or early summer of 1870, when she returned to Lynn. During most of her stay in Amesbury, she lived with Miss Sarah Bagley; she lived with the Websters for only a short time.

Mrs. Eddy was an author of recognized ability long before her discovery of Christian Science, which occurred at Lynn in 1866. Born in 1821, she was a frequent contributor of poetry and prose to newspapers and periodicals from the time when she became a young woman. For instance, she was the author of a poem in the I. O. O. F. Covenant for December, 1845. For other instances, she was the author of two poems which were reprinted in a book containing a collection of poetry and prose by New Hampshire authors which was published at Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1850, and was again published at Boston in 1856.

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