'I BEGAN BY TEACHING . . .'

BY JUDY HUENNEKE

Perhaps one of the most remarkable facts in the history of class instruction in Christian Science is the modest way it began. When Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, took on her first student, she was not an experienced teacher. And yet this was her way of sharing her discovery. She later wrote in her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection: "In 1867 I introduced the first purely metaphysical system of healing since the apostolic days. I began by teaching one student Christian Science Mind-healing" (p. 43).

In 1867, Mary Baker Eddy was not the leader or teacher of a religious movement. She was a single woman of very limited means. Barely a year before, she had had a remarkable experience, an instantaneous recovery from serious injuries following an accident. The healing came after she turned to the Scriptures, and this inspired her to make a deep study of the Bible. As she continued with this, she became convinced that Christian healing was not a special endowment but a gift to share with others, a gift to all humanity.

So it's not surprising that her first student was not a clergyman or a physician, but a shoemaker. Her teaching continued on a one-on-one basis for several years, until she taught a class of half a dozen students in 1870. By this time she was using a textbook, although it wasn't Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, because that book hadn't been written yet. The series of questions and answers she used in this early teaching eventually became a chapter in Science and Health called "Recapitulation." This chapter still functions as the text for Christian Science Primary class instruction today.