Items of Interest February 23, 1935 Issue

Items of Interest

Christian Scientists will be interested to know that the house at 23 Paradise Road, in Swampscott, Massachusetts, where Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, lived in 1866, is now open to the public. The house, owned by the Longyear Foundation, of Brookline, Massachusetts, was recently renovated by the Foundation's Trustees, and furnished according to the period in which Mrs. Eddy occupied a suite of rooms there.

The Christian Science Board Directors lent to the Longyear Foundation some articles of furniture for the house, including a bed and three chairs that were formerly used by Mrs. Eddy in her house at Pleasant View, Concord, New Hampshire. Some other small items which were part of the furnishings of her room in the original Mother Church edifice, which Mrs. Eddy closed in 1908, were also lent by the Directors to help to furnish the rooms in the house on Paradise Road. Other interesting historical pieces, acquired or owned by the Trustees, include a desk that was in the office of Asa G. Eddy when he was practicing Christian Science healing, before his marriage to the Founder of Christian Science. Within the desk is what may be called the first post-office box of the Christian Science activities; for it received the orders, so it is said, for copies of Science and Health when the latter was first published.

Mrs. Eddy occupied this house at a very important period in her life. Here she was a faithful wife and careful housekeeper, a warm friend, a devoted Bible student and church attendant. She was a contributor to local publications and a earnest worker for temperance. It was from this house she went with friends to attend a temperance meeting in Lynn, Massachusetts, on Thursday evening, February 1, 1866. On the way, at the corner of Market and Oxford Streets in Lynn, she fell on the ice and was severely injured. Cared for during the night in a near-by residence, she was removed, on February 2, to the house on Paradise Road, where friends came to visit her, and where her life was despaired of. On Sunday, the third day after the accident, as she records, she read the account of the healing of the palsied man by Jesus. Regarding this wonderful experience she has said, "The lost chord of Truth (healing, as of old) I caught consciously from the Divine Harmony, vibrating its own sweet music. It was to me a revelation of Truth,—God; and Science, explaining the Principle of this Divine Harmony, enabled me to understand it, and to systematize and demonstrate Truth" (The Christian Science Journal, June, 1887). Sibyl Wilbur writes in her biography of Mary Baker Eddy that she "arose from her bed, dressed, and walked into the parlor. ..." She had recovered through divine power from the immediate effects of her injury, and thenceforth she devoted herself assiduously to gaining the understanding of the divine Principle which had brought about this healing, and to formulating her understanding so that she could bring its benefits to suffering humanity.

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