Article April 20, 1981 Issue

Looking from the heights of Mind

ELIZABETH GLASS BARLOW

"All I have ever accomplished has been done by getting Mary out of the way, and letting God be reflected."^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 118 .} These words of Mrs. Eddy's, recounted by one of her students, seem to this writer to sum up the motif of her life. From early childhood she showed a love of good. This love thrust her into an abiding trust in the almightiness of God, of Love's potency. And she caught the flame of inspiration that the Bible holds high and saw God as the one cause and man as His unfragmented effect or reflection.

Mrs. Eddy's life shows us a new way to see and live; it encourages us to put Mind, God, the primal cause, first in all that we think and do. And in order to put God first, each of her devoted followers endeavors to get the false sense of self, the limited physique-sense, out of the way and to put on man's real individuality as the boundless likeness of infinite Mind.

Referring to her writing of the textbook, Mrs. Eddy says, "I was a scribe under orders...."^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 311.} Centuries before, God's gift had come as a man: Christ Jesus. Now it had come as the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. But Mrs. Eddy, its author, was much more than a spiritually-minded, unselfed writer. She was this, but she was so much more—oh, how much more! Her life and her book were and remain inseparable spiritual events.