Article October 14, 2002 Issue

In her true light ...

A look at the unpublished writings of Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy

This short message to Czar Nicholas II of Russia, written by Mary Baker Eddy in 1898, was probably drafted in response to an interesting item on the front page of the second issue of the Christian Science Weekly (which several months later would be renamed the Christian Science Sentinel). Under "Current Events," it was noted that Nicholas had asked his foreign minister "to hand to the foreign diplomats in St. Petersburg a note" that stated in part that "the maintenance of general peace and the possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations, present themselves in existing conditions to the whole world as an idea toward which the endeavors of all governments should be directed." (History shows that Nicholas truly wanted peace, but by 1905 was pressured by political and family relationships to prepare Russia for war.)

"To His Majesty Nicholas II, Czar of all the Russias:

The members of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in the United States of America, and numbering eleven thousand members, would convey to you our hearty thanks for the divine impulse that hath caused your Majesty to humanly voice a sentiment most Christian in the final disarming of all military power on our planet. This God-inspired proposition is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His paths [see Mark 1:3].

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