Mary Baker Eddy, trailblazer
Sherry Darling and Jonathon Eder
Mary Baker Eddy was an innovator in religion, publishing, and journalism as well as in institutional leadership. At a time when even well-to-do women were disenfranchised in many avenues of public life, her spiritual journey was one of challenge and inspiration, struggle and triumph, adversity and healing.
Out of it came a revolutionary and bestselling book on spirituality and healing, an international church, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning daily newspaper, as well as monthly and weekly magazines, all of which are still in operation today.
In this lively and informative chat, Sherry Darling, researcher in the archives of The Mary Baker Eddy Library, and Jonathon Eder, the Library's Reference Room Administrator, answer questions from site visitors about, among other things, Mrs. Eddy's healing practice, her Bible collection, and her impact on the publishing industry.
They also discuss the Library's services and collections, as well as the work of the Library in introducing Mrs. Eddy's life and legacy to a wider audience.
spirituality.com host: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. Today we’re going to talk with two researchers from The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity about “Mary Baker Eddy, Trailblazer.” Our guests are Sherry Darling and Jonathon Eder. Sherry has a PhD from Tufts University and has been a researcher in the archives of the Library for about five years. Her job includes answering historical questions about Mrs. Eddy and the history of Christian Science.
Jonathon is the Library’s Reference Room administrator, which means that he oversees the development of its collection. He has been a writer/researcher at the Library, involved in the development of its exhibits, and he holds a masters degree from the University of New Mexico.
Jonathon, do you have some comments to get us started?
Jonathon Eder: Sure. I think thinking of Mary Baker Eddy as a trailblazer is a very, very valid approach to her life. She thought of herself in that term. When she published the first edition of Science and Health in 1875, in the preface she writes, “Since the hoary centuries but faintly shadow forth the tireless intelligence at work for man, this volume may not at once open a new thought. It has the task of a pioneer to hack away at the tall oak and cut the rough granite.” And her life, in many respects, was a life of ongoing hacking and cutting away at rough granite to make her revelation available to humanity. So she definitely was a trailblazer in her time and for our time.
spirituality.com host: Thanks. Sherry, do you have some thoughts?
Sherry Darling: Yes. I’ve been thinking about what the archives have to say about Mary Baker Eddy as a trailblazer. And I think that what they reveal is that Mrs. Eddy was a woman on a mission, a divine mission, and that she accomplished tremendous things for the cause of Christian Science. For example, we know she authored the textbook and numerous other writings, she founded a church and a publishing society, that she taught hundreds of students her healing system. And what the archives show is that Mrs. Eddy was really a practicing Christian Scientist. That she overcame incredible obstacles in her path through her faith in God and her understanding of humanity’s relationship to God. She definitely practiced what she preached.
spirituality.com host: Well, that’s really wonderful, and we have a whole lot of questions already, which is also wonderful. And we hope all of you out there will continue sending in your questions. This one is from Trudi in Los Angeles, California, who asks, “What are your favorite aspects of Mrs. Eddy’s life—the ones that you find most interesting?”
Sherry: I think that it’s hard to narrow it down to one, but I’ll try. One thing that I really appreciate about her is how grounded a person she was. For someone who developed the spiritual system of healing, that based her life in metaphysics, to be such a grounded person; she was very much about common sense, and was a very practical New Englander. I just appreciate that you see that approach so much in everything that she did.
spirituality.com host: Jonathon?
Jonathon: Well, I really appreciate her dedication to future generations, of which I am one, obviously—the fact that she devoted so much time and effort and energy to recording her thoughts and to making them clear for application by people who would follow in her path. So I feel that she’s a living presence, that one can turn to her works, to her writings, and that she’s available as counsel, as a guide. That really is something I hold very dear.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. Sabra, who’s writing from Chiloquin, Oregon says—and I think you guys will enjoy this one—“Can you recommend a website for in-depth information about Mary Baker Eddy?”
Sherry: Oh, excellent. We get to, of course, plug the Mary Baker Eddy Library.
spirituality.com host: Go ahead.
Sherry: www.marybakereddylibrary.org.
spirituality.com host: And tell a little bit about what’s on there.
Sherry: There’s quite a bit that you can find out about her life, her achievements—many of the things I’m sure that we’ll touch on today, major accomplishments. There’s information about milestone editions of Science and Health, for example, some of the major revisions. And information on the things that the Library is doing today to let people know more about her life and ideas.
spirituality.com host: Since the Research Room is described there and that’s the place where people can send questions, would you like to give the email address for people who wanted to send questions to the Library?
Sherry: Absolutely. They can send their historical questions to research@mbelibrary.org. We’re happy to answer those.
spirituality.com host: Okay. And what about the Reference Room? Do you want to give an address for that?
Jonathon: Sure. Essentially the same—just instead of research, write to reference@mbelibrary.org.
spirituality.com host: What kind of questions should go to the Reference Room as compared to Research?
Jonathon: I think questions that are of a more general nature, that don’t require investigation into the Library’s archives. We answer a lot of basic questions about Mary Baker Eddy’s life, but also questions that relate to resources concerning her period and related matters. For example, if people want to learn more about Lynn, Massachusetts, where she lived and worked, and what the quality and character of that place was like in the 1870s, we have materials that we can recommend. So that would be an example. We really feature a lot of materials that relate to her historical time period, to religious history, American history, and to certain important themes, such as women in religious leadership, women in leadership generally, and the relationship of spirituality to health in human thought over time, in her time, and today.
spirituality.com host: Thanks. This is from Fernan in Michigan, who asks, “What do you think Mary Baker Eddy would have said about the discovery of what might be Jesus’ burial place in Jerusalem?” Sherry, do you want to take that one?
Sherry: Sure. It’s an interesting question. My colleagues and I on the Research Room team try not to speculate about what she would think about something. But I know she says somewhere in her writings that ultimately that sort of material life of Jesus is not what mattered. That it’s what we have—it’s the spiritual quality of his life. She even says at one point that if historians decided that there actually wasn’t a man named Jesus, it still wouldn’t change what she knows to be true about the Science of being. I think that maybe that kind of comes to bear here—that based on her statement that the sort of material Jesus is less important than the spiritual quality of the Christ.
spirituality.com host: Now this is from Ruth in Ontario, Canada, and she’s saying, “Mary Baker Eddy did not want her personality to be focused on. So why do we have a library based on her personality?”
Jonathon: Well, the Library’s very concerned with preserving the papers and the legacy of Mary Baker Eddy. Its purpose is not to celebrate her personality. That was something that was of great concern to her, and she writes very specifically that she didn’t want people to look to her as person. Her life, though, very much was a proving ground and a journey that informed her explication of her revelation, her development of her church, and the legacy that she has left to us. So to separate her life and her life story from the outcome of that life is not really an appropriate thing to do.
The Library is concerned that that life be accurately represented, that scholars and others have an opportunity to investigate it in a format that allows an open and transparent investigation into what resources we have—and we have abundant resources—that speak to that life.
She wrote in a letter in 1891 about her life. She says, “Oh, the marvel of my life! What would be thought of it if it was known in a millionth of its detail?” It’s a very rich story, it’s an important story, and it’s a story that blesses. So I think there is a great deal of value in having an institution that really cares for and preserves that story and the records that relate to it.
spirituality.com host: This is from Jimmy in Chiloquin, Oregon: “Has there been a recent biography of Mary Baker Eddy for children?”
Sherry: Probably the most recent that I can think of is a biography called, Come and See, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, by Isabel Ferguson. They might want to look into that one.
spirituality.com host: All right. Jean-Pierre, who’s writing from London in the United Kingdom says, “Today, Google announced that they are offering to search the news 200 years back through their archive search service. Is the Mary Baker Eddy Library planning to make digital collections available online for all?”
Sherry: It’s certainly something we’ve talked about, and I think it is something that I would hope will happen in the future. Right now, Mary Baker Eddy’s papers have been transcribed and they’re available electronically here in the Library. So you can come and do full-text searches into what are considered her previously unpublished writings. It would be ideal if some day they could be made available to the wider public than just those who are able to come here.
One thing that I think this listener might be interested in knowing is that The Christian Science Monitor has been archived in this format, and you can go through csmonitor.comand search the Monitor all the way back to 1908 now.
spirituality.com host: Really?
Sherry: It’s been done by a company called ProQuest, which has done some other newspapers, as well. But that’s a really great tool to be able to search the Monitor just right from home all the way back.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. I didn’t know about that. Wonderful! Susie, who’s writing from Spain, has a little bit longer question: “Recently, I have been looking at Mary Baker Eddy’s pioneering role in the sciences. Interestingly enough, Mrs. Eddy was doing her medical researches just about the time that MIT, a premier technical science research institution, was forming. And during the time that she was writing Science and Health, her textbook of Christian Science, women were just being allowed into MIT as an experiment, as the university president said. That would definitely place her as a pioneer in the field of science in general. Are there any other parallels in Mary Baker Eddy’s life to the general field of the sciences that are of note?”
Sherry: That’s an interesting question.
Jonathon: Well, I think one thing that is interesting is that there is a consultant to the Library, Dr. David Hufford, [who] did a lot of research in our collections and wrote a paper on it as part of a roadmap to our collections, placing Mary Baker Eddy and her life and her investigations within the context of what was developing historically in the United States around the sciences at that point. Really, there was no systematic scientific study. In fact, in that time even the word science was not typically used in the way that it is today. People we would think of as scientists now often referred to themselves as philosophers or naturalists.
So her work was taking place really at an embryonic period for the sciences generally, and she was involved, as she refers to herself, as “an honest investigator” in that way, very much in keeping with how others were approaching the sciences. It was very independent—people operating very much on their own.
With the advent of institutions like MIT, Johns Hopkins, and others, which really started in those decades after the Civil War, there was a formalization of scientific study. But that was happening at this time, or really after Mary Baker Eddy’s genesis of studying in these areas. So it’s a very interesting question. It’s very interesting to think of her as a scientist, and as a legitimate scientist, in terms of what was going on at that time. I don’t know if that directly answers the question, but I think it gives a little bit of a flavor of what the period was like.
spirituality.com host: It was very fluid at that time. Even medical education, and so forth, was very fluid, wasn’t it?
Jonathon: Well, that’s right. There was an important investigation of the medical faculty by a gentleman named Abraham Flexner at the beginning of the 20th century, where he discovered that curricula between medical schools was extremely varied, that the standards were all over the map; that there was no coherence to what medical education was, and so as a patient you really had very little expectation as to what kind of quality of treatment, or even what type of treatment was falling under the rubric of medical science at that point. So it was the Wild West of medicine, certainly, at that point.
spirituality.com host: Now Martin in North Carolina has a very interesting question. He says, “What are the most common questions you get at the Library? And are there any common misconceptions you’re constantly having to correct?”
Sherry: I really appreciate that question. There are…maybe I’ll start with the myths. There are a number of things that come in to us repeatedly, and from a range of people. One of the things that comes in a lot is we’re often asked to authenticate different writings that have been in circulation for a long time and which are attributed to Mary Baker Eddy. One of them is a document that’s called, “A treatment for every day,” and it comes in with her name on it. We get calls very frequently about this. But we know that it’s actually not by her. We actually offer a handout if people want to contact the Research Room. We’re happy to send out this document that goes through this “A treatment for every day,” and shows, when we do know who the authors actually were, that there’s only about a sentence that we think that we can trace back to Mary Baker Eddy herself. So those sorts of things—we’re always happy to correct some false identifications of things to her.
We deal with a number of questions that are like that, where people are often asking, “Did she write this?” or even “Did she say this?” We do a lot of work in things looking in her own writings or to see if they turned up in reminiscences where people are writing about things she said specifically to them. So we answer a lot of questions specifically about statements she made, things that she wrote.
Of course, too, we’re also answering questions about Manual By-Laws, for example, other aspects of church. We frequently answer those, as well, and are happy to try to help people.
spirituality.com host: So there’s not one outstanding question per se that you get like 50 times in a week or something like that?
Sherry: I’d say we get a pretty good range. I think they probably fall into categories more than just the same question over and over. A lot of them really are about Mary Baker Eddy herself and her verbal remarks and written statements, things like that, to, as I described, things related to the church or the Manual or things like that.
spirituality.com host: This is from LP in New Jersey: “What effect did Mary Baker Eddy have on American book publishing? I’ve heard that she pushed on the publishing practices of her day for higher excellence for the printing of her books. Is that true?”
Sherry: Well, there’s evidence in a book called Mary Baker Eddy and Her Books, by William Dana Orcutt, where he speaks to some of the experience of working with her and publishing her books. While I can’t speak to the whole of printing, he brings up a few examples of things from working with her on Science and Health that became things that impacted the printing industry at the time. One was that she helped to advance printing on Bible paper in the United States, and that that really wasn’t done. It was hard to do. That Bible paper was a very thin but durable paper that could be printed on both sides. She wanted Science and Health to be printed on Bible paper in order to encourage more people to read the Bible. She thought if it looked like the Bible then that would encourage people to read the Bible.
Orcutt also talks about how she really understood something that was near and dear to him, which was printing as an art form as opposed to just being a trade. And that she was very particular about how her books looked. So I think he enjoyed working with her because it helped to increase that standard for print quality—using very legible and yet beautiful type fonts and other embellishments on the page and the quality of paper, and that sort of thing. So those are two things that he brings out.
spirituality.com host: Matt in Asheville, North Carolina says, “For about a decade after her initial healing, Mrs. Eddy did not start a church. Did she have this plan for a church during this time, or was it a need found later to further her cause?”
Sherry: It’s an interesting question. He’s right in that the formal church comes later, but there’s certainly early evidence of her holding church services. There wasn’t a formal organization, but even before the publication of Science and Health, she was already holding some church services. You see that church is so important to Mrs. Eddy during her whole life that I think it would be hard to ever separate that concept from her. Even though the formal church comes much later, it was obviously something that was always very important to her.
spirituality.com host: Lynn in Laguna Niguel, which probably is California, is asking, “May I hear again about Mrs. Eddy’s development of topics, subjects, for the Weekly Bible Lessons?” Would you like to talk to that, Jonathon? Or the two of you together?
Jonathon: Well, perhaps. I know she thought and prayed about it very, very deeply and extensively. There was a time when it was suggested to her that repeating them twice yearly was not appropriate—that there should be 52 different subjects rather than 26. And she was very quick to squash that idea. She explained that these subjects had come to her directly from God, that she’d worked them out and that there were to be no more than the 26. I don’t know what else you might be able to share, Sherry, on that.
Sherry: No, I think that’s my sense of it, too—that we don’t really have a further elaboration from her that I can think of in terms of why each one. But certainly she was adamant that it was these 26, and that they had come to her from God.
spirituality.com host: I think for our listeners who are not familiar with the Bible Lessons—these are weekly lessons that are read in the Christian Science Quarterly. Anyone can read it; you don’t have to be a church member. And the 26 topics range from “God” to “Christ Jesus” to “Man” to “Are sin, disease, and death real?” That just gives you an idea of some of them. They’re very interesting and each Lesson is different because they’re based on selections from the Bible and Science and Health. If you’d like to know more about them, you can actually investigate it on spirituality.com, because we do have a little segment on there about the Bible Lesson.
Our next question is from Deanna, who is writing from the Reading Room in Towson, Maryland. She says, “I’ve heard that Mary Baker Eddy had over 50 Bibles. Were there one or two versions that she cherished more than the others? Also, did she study Greek and Hebrew to know the Bible better?”
Sherry: Well, we know that her brother Albert received a classical education from Dartmouth, and Greek and Hebrew were certainly things that he studied, and then tutored her in. I don’t think that Mrs. Eddy would claim fluency in those languages, but it was certainly something that she was exposed to as a girl. In terms of the Bibles, I think that you’d have to say, while she read a number of different translations, the King James was probably always her favorite. That’s the one I think she returns to most. But we know that she read a number of other translations as well.
spirituality.com host: Do you want to make a few comments about Mrs. Eddy’s Bible collection?
Sherry: Sure. The Library actually has a very extensive collection of Bibles, and a portion of those were ones that Mary Baker Eddy herself owned. There are some really rare and interesting Bibles in this collection. And one thing that some people enjoy studying when they come to the Library, or that we can even send to them, are the notations she made in her Bibles. Those have been transcribed, as well. You can search them to see, for example, did she make notes in Matthew, or things like that, that you can get a sense of. Her notes are often sort of cryptic in those margins—they obviously meant something very personal to her. But it is interesting to see where she was making notations in her Bibles.
spirituality.com host: This is from Lucie in Boston, and she’s saying, “Those of us who live in the Boston area know how much the Library contains that is not specifically about Mary Baker Eddy. Could you give listeners some idea of the other materials and how they apply?”
Jonathon: Well, I touched on it a little bit earlier in terms of describing the kinds of materials that we have in the Reference Room. The Library is very interested in providing a variety of points of reference and windows to the general public into Mary Baker Eddy’s contributions. We’re very interested in having resources that pertain to the historical period of her time, resources that pertain to important themes in her life and in her writings. We have extensive collections that deal with research that’s been done, for example, in the mind/body relationship, or in the relationship of religious practice and health, or in the relationship of spirituality and health, which was an important field of her own research and endeavor, and she writes on it extensively in terms of her understanding of Christian Science and how it relates to those themes.
The quest for spirituality, the quest for answers that are deeply satisfying, has been an ongoing theme in human history. It’s a part of our exhibits here, and as a result, it’s also a part of our collections. Mary Baker Eddy dedicates her major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “to honest seekers for Truth.” So that ongoing, timeless search that is such a unique part of the human experience is something that we embrace in what we provide here at the Library.
spirituality.com host: Steve in Chicago asks, “Did Mary Baker Eddy want her unpublished writings to be made public?”
Sherry: Well, it’s a good question. I think she certainly saw her place in history and saw the importance of her life. And I think that that is what the Library really considered, in part, in making the decision to make her papers available, and really tried to get a sense of the different statements she made about her life, of course, which are evidenced in her papers. And also, the idea that making her papers available and preserving copyright and things like that. [To Jonathon] If you have more of a sense of…you were here a little bit before me in terms of some of the thought behind the Library.
Jonathon: It’s an interesting question. I think one of the things that I just cited from her letter of 1891, “Oh, the marvel of my life! What would be thought of it if it was known in a millionth of its detail?” There’s a publication of the Library, In My True Light and Life, and I don’t remember the exact quotation, but something to the extent of, “If my story could be understood in my true light and life…” So it was something that was very important to her, that her life be accurately and correctly perceived. And biography is a very, very complex subject. History is a very complex subject. On any important historical figure there’s a whole range and variety of perspectives that are written. I think that it is to her advantage, to the advantage of her legacy, that the opportunity be there for people to have an opportunity to really look into that life and represent it in the best way possible. And the Library really endeavors to help with that activity.
spirituality.com host: One other aspect of it that many of us may think is that Mary Baker Eddy is just kind of a small figure on the world stage in terms of our looking back at the historical period and saying, “Well that was then and this is now. But at the time of her life—I don’t know if you could call her a celebrity—she was someone whose opinion really mattered. People asked for her comments, asked her to endorse certain movements, and things like that. This is an individual who was really a major historical figure as far as religious history of this period was concerned, wasn’t she?
Sherry: Absolutely. If a newspaper was putting together opinions on divorce, for example, she would be one of the people who would be contacted to give her thoughts on it, and any other social issues. You see time and again where she’s included when people are asked to talk about these issues.
The other issue, too, is during her own lifetime, people were writing things about her that were just often untrue, just complete works of fiction. This was often very harmful and damaging. And being able to go to this primary source material and looking at her life is the best way to really accurately represent it and be able to present it to the public. As Jonathon pointed out, that was very important to her, that the public have a true sense of her life and her mission. And not having to rely on other people’s descriptions of who she was is really valuable, so that we aren’t tied to things that were often inaccurate. Because we have these papers and they’re available; we’re able to be writing biographies about her today and still make her life and ideas even more available to the world.
spirituality.com host: One other thing that I was thinking about as we talked before the program was Mrs. Eddy’s groundedness and compassion. Sometimes when you think of someone who’s very spiritually-minded, you think, “Well, they’re kind of on another planet; they’re not really thinking about human needs, and so forth.” But she actually had a history of charitable acts and kindness to individuals. There’s an instance of a woman who got there and the parlor, I think, was kind of cold, and she was thinking, “Well, Mrs. Eddy would never feel cold.” And she was feeling a little ashamed that she was feeling cold. But when Mrs. Eddy walked into the room, what did she say but, “Golly, it’s cold in here. Let me get you a shawl.” Don’t you think that just showing the evidences of Mrs. Eddy’s compassion as a human being, as well as her great spiritual devotion—gives you a fuller picture of her?
Sherry: Absolutely. And I think it goes back to what I mentioned at the very beginning that I so love about the archive—it reveals Mrs. Eddy’s life as a practicing Christian Scientist. That this wasn’t a woman who had one event that sort of sealed the deal for her, or that she never had another challenge or anything like that. Instead, she had plenty of challenges, probably more than most people. But it was through her practice of Christian Science that she was able to overcome them. I think that’s something that’s really valuable about the archive—you can see not only her individual practice of Christian Science, but those of her students as well, because while obviously Science and Healthis the statement of Christian Science, as she says, it’s really nice to see these individuals be able to ask her individual questions. Of course, she never deviates from her teaching inScience and Health. But you can learn a lot by just seeing what individuals were going through then, as well as her own experiences.
spirituality.com host: Also, if she had had, like you said, one experience that sealed the deal, she could have said, “I’m happy, I don’t need to go write a book. I don’t need to go through all this trouble.” Yet despite that having been kind of a backyard option, she sailed forward bravely through a lot of turbulent waters.
Sherry: Absolutely.
spirituality.com host: Sarah in North Kingston, Rhode Island, is asking, “Are you still discovering new material written by Mary Baker Eddy, for example, letters that she may have sent to family and friends?”
Sherry: There are things that do turn up, which is exciting. We like to think there will always be new things. Recently, the Library acquired a letter that she had written to the governor in New Hampshire, where she was writing about paving roads in Concord. And that’s a nice find. So there are still things out there. And of course, the Library collects more than just the writings of Mary Baker Eddy—things related to the Christian Science movement, to the Church, early workers, things like that. So we’re definitely very interested in and acquiring new material.
spirituality.com host: Christy in Mammoth Lakes, California writes, “During each past ‘Women’s History Month’ in our country, I keep expecting to hear Mary Baker Eddy’s name mentioned. Yet I haven’t. Are steps being taken to bring her name much more to the forefront of current women’s studies and events?” And of course, one reason we’re doing a chat on Mrs. Eddy this month is part of the Women’s History Month activity.
Sherry: Oh, definitely. I think that’s really part of the Library’s mission—that she will be included in these lists. Because as you mentioned earlier, she was recognized as a very important figure in her own day. I think in some ways we've sort of lost a sense of just how much of a public role she played, even larger than with Christian Scientists. But Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science were featured in the news all the time, and she was considered a very valuable citizen, and her insight on things was always valued. So I think that the more and more we can talk about her and her ideas, she will start to appear more and more beyond just women’s history month.
Jonathon: And it does happen. It was of note, I think, in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine that she made the list of the top 100 most influential Americans in history. In a recent poll of religious scholars—it was done through the “Religion and Ethics” program that’s part of Public Broadcasting, she was noted as one of the top 25 religious figures of the 20th century. So she is on people’s radars, and it surprises us sometimes when she comes up, but I think a lot more can be done so that there is a correct and accurate understanding of her.
spirituality.com host: Jennie in Paris is saying, “At the height of her career, how often was Mrs. Eddy healing others? Do the records in her archive indicate, and if so, how do they document this—if healing others was a daily practice for her?”
Sherry: It’s a good question. I think it’s as early as the second edition of Science and Health where she talks about no longer being in the public practice as though she were a practitioner practicing like her students and so forth. And even in the Journal, they would post notices saying that she wasn’t taking cases. But she was a very active healer all the same. While she was working on revising Science and Health, doing her teaching and other work, as opposed to being in the fulltime advertised practice as a Christian Science healer, she was certainly healing.
There’s a great biography if you want to read about her healings, called Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer. That’s a really nice book, because it moves, I believe, chronologically through documented cases of healing. Many of them are coming from reminiscences written by the people who themselves were healed, and they talk about the circumstances surrounding their healing. Others come from her own writing about different cases that she healed. So while she might have said that she was no longer in the public practice of healing, she was always a healer, and there are a lot of really fabulous healings that you can read about all the way up to 1910. A lot of them are people in her household or people that had some business with her, things like that. But Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healeris a great place to start.
We have something else through the Research Room that would probably be useful to people who are interested in this topic. We’ve pulled letters out of the collection that are on this theme of Christian Science practice and healing. And they are letters of advice where students would write in to Mrs. Eddy and have a question about either something they were working through themselves or perhaps a case that they were trying to heal. And she would offer advice on how they might want to pray or think about this. It’s a three volume set, and they’re really quite fascinating. They work from 1870 all the way up through 1910. I think that they’re quite insightful, and as I pointed out before, they really just take you back to Science and Health. And they’re pretty wonderful.
spirituality.com host: If someone wanted to pursue that they could get in touch with you?
Sherry: Absolutely. The Research Room is where you would want to go, and you can either find out more through email or if you know it’s something you’d want to purchase, you can call us. Our number is 617-450-7218. We’re happy to send people those.
spirituality.com host: Okay. Thank you. Now this is from Anne on Cape Cod, and she says, “Do you see the general public showing more interest and/or having a better knowledge of Mary Baker Eddy since the opening of her Library?”
Sherry: We do see increased interest definitely, I think, from the public. One thing that’s really nice about our work, and I think Jonathon can speak to this, too, is the range of people that we get to work with every day. Many of those people are from the general public—they’re people who are interested in her for a variety of different reasons, as well as her time period, and so forth. You probably see that, too.
Jonathon: Well, yeah, absolutely. I’m not sure I can compare now versus then that clearly, but certainly since the opening of the Library, we have documented an increase in the amount of queries and an increase in the amount of interest, visitation, etc., to the Library. So the wave is increasing.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. Dawn from the Reading Room in Towson, Maryland, is saying, “As a trailblazer, how far out of Boston/New England, did Mrs. Eddy travel to promote Christian Science?”
Sherry: Well, we know she went to Chicago and to Washington, DC, but a lot of it was traveling through New England. Of course, we know her students took it far and wide, and I think that that’s where you start to see, in terms of a geographic dissemination of Christian Science, that you have a lot of students who are going farther and farther west. And eventually it travels internationally.
spirituality.com host: Didn’t she sometimes even assign people to take up certain work outside the Boston area?
Sherry: Yes. She certainly encouraged people—they would often get reports of where people were interested in Christian Science. Maybe they had seen the Journal or Science and Health or something and were really looking for a teacher. And they would make sure that they would send a teacher out there.
spirituality.com host: And the last 100 pages of Science and Health have a huge variety of healings from many different parts of the country, for sure, maybe the world. And that spread of Science and Health through individuals was kind of an important part, too, wasn’t it?
Sherry: Absolutely. It’s great that you bring up “Fruitage,” because then you really see the role of Science and Health in terms of spreading Christian Science, because those are all healings by people who were healed just by reading Science and Health. There wasn’t a practitioner or a teacher involved in the healing—it came about just by reading it. So you really see where the spread of Christian Science is done through Science and Healthitself. Obviously, that was enough in many places until they could ideally start getting practitioner and teachers established there.
spirituality.com host: And that sort of helps to explain why she was so meticulous in editing Science and Health, to have it be just as perfect a statement as possible, doesn’t it?
Sherry: Oh, definitely.
spirituality.com host: Because she was sort of expecting the book to go out there by itself, in a way.
Sherry: Yes, and I think that this is, again, one of the things I most appreciate about her is she was really just tireless in revising her own work. We count Science and Health at over 400 editions because she made so many revisions to it. Some small and some large. But she was so interested in this book being just as clear and as strong in its healing message as it possibly could be. And I just love that. It’s like you mentioned earlier, she could have just written a book and left it at that—most people do…occasionally maybe you’ll get a second edition of a book. But the fact that she never let it go, that she always wanted to make her argument stronger and more able to be understood by a variety of people. She, I think, saw that Science and Health was so important, way beyond her, and that it was a book that she studied herself. That’s one thing I really value about her, is that she just was so dedicated to revising that book and making it the best it could possibly be, so that it would serve as the standard long after she was no longer here.
spirituality.com host: Linda in the United Kingdom is writing, “Prior to writing Science and Health and founding the church, I’ve wondered how she supported herself in the days absent women’s rights. Were her speaking engagements her only source of income? Relatives did not appear to be supportive. Where did her support come from?”
Jonathon: Well, there are various means by which she garnered an income. She did sell pieces, essays, articles, poetry, to newspapers, which was a way that women had of making money at that period. So she was actively involved in that. She spoke on various subjects prior to establishing the Christian Science movement. I think she delivered a talk on the Civil War based on the experiences of her second husband as a prisoner of war in the South, at what was then called Waterville College, now Colby College, in Maine. So she had a history of being involved with the media of her time, and that was a source of income.
She did some teaching at various times. So she entered into a lot of the very limited provinces that were available to women at that time professionally.
Sherry: Sure. And she certainly often struggled.
Jonathon: Yeah.
Sherry: She talks about that sometimes it was very difficult just meeting very basic needs.
spirituality.com host: Laurie in Alaska is asking a pretty big question that maybe we can just point her toward the right place to get information. She says, “Is there any way to find out what prompted Mrs. Eddy to write each of the By-Laws in the Manual, especially the ‘Discipline’ section?”
Sherry: We answer a lot of questions about the Manual in the Research Room, and so we certainly welcome people to contact us. It’s easiest for us if we can have specific By-Laws that you’re interested in, and we can certainly offer you what information we know about them, which sometimes is a lot and sometimes is a little. We certainly have tried to put together as much information as we can for people and often are able to answer questions for them to get a sense of what the background is on different By-Laws. So certainly feel free to contact the Research Room with questions.
spirituality.com host: So Laurie could just send her email to that email address?
Sherry: Absolutely.
spirituality.com host: Okay. Joy, who’s writing from the Raleigh, North Carolina Reading Room says, “Please tell some things about Mrs. Eddy’s life that make her a relevant woman to people today.”
Jonathon: Well, there’s an abundance of relevance to Mary Baker Eddy’s life, I think, with contemporary experience. Certainly the quest story, I think, is very relevant to people today, particularly in the context of being very much on her own as a woman, providing for herself with very little in the way of support. Her disappointments in marriage—her first husband dying very shortly into the marriage, being on her own after that, being a single mom without much in the way of advantage, and having to surrender her child. This is a theme that, I’m sure, would resonate with many people today. That struggle, that pain, which was something that she remembered throughout her life, because she didn’t have the means at that time, and because the law was not supportive of her, that she had to give up her child.
The industry and the self-reliance that she had to develop in order to make it, in order to just make it before she had her mission, was something she drew on. Then, when she did have her mission she really applied those hard lessons of life in terms of working out the details and the administration of organizing this small little group of people in Lynn, Massachusetts, once she had written Science and Health and was starting to share that message.
So really, as a story of self-reliance in a bewildering world of different choices as to how to look after oneself in different paths—it was a very diverse and developing, and kind of wild marketplace of ideas in her times, much in the same way that it is today.
spirituality.com host: Do you have anything you want to add to that, Sherry?
Sherry: Maybe a few years ago we had a tour group of probably junior-high-school-age girls from the inner city, and it was so interesting to see what they identified with, coming in with very little information, and maybe basic things that their teacher had told them about Mary Baker Eddy, and when they came up and were investigating some of the collection, to see what they were particularly taken with. And it was some of these things that Jonathon mentioned: that she was a single mother, that she’d been divorced. Those were things that they had experienced in their own lives with their parents. And it was just interesting to see that once they had that connection, they were sort of interested in other things. They liked the fact, for example, that she had written poetry at about their age—those sorts of things were meaningful to them. And I really appreciated that.
spirituality.com host: Jeanne, who’s writing from the Auburn, California Reading Room, says, “What can we do at a local level to better present Mrs. Eddy to the community? Are there materials available for presentations to groups or library study meetings?”
Sherry: We are happy to help people with their questions and things that they would like to create displays or things like that. We can certainly give them the raw materials if they’d like to develop these sorts of things. I think it’s a great idea that although we talked about the archive here, that you can investigate electronically, there’s so much that we send out to people all over the world. So people should feel that the Library and the archive actually are quite accessible remotely, even if the entire full-text searchable archive is not. We’ve had people contact us in the past and say, for example, “We’re interested in doing a display….” I think we had one in a mall one time, where they were given the opportunity to put up a display for Women’s History Month, and we were able to talk with them about some of their ideas of things. And then we can send some documents to help you that you could use to create these kinds of things. We’re happy to do that.
spirituality.com host: Okay. And this is from Daniel in New York City: “Can you tell us anything about how the Library was named? Were there direct references drawn upon?”
Jonathon: Yes. It’s eluding me at the moment.
Sherry: Oh, “for the Betterment of Humanity?”
Jonathon: Yeah.
Sherry: I can’t remember…it is…
Jonathon: It’s a phrase that Mary Baker Eddy uses herself, so it’s not something that we invented, but extracted from her writings or a statement. Please email us directly, and we’ll get you the exact reference.
spirituality.com host: This is from Edward in Texas: “Does The Mother Church still maintain a history department, or has this been transferred to The Mary Baker Eddy Library?”
Sherry: Yes. The Research Room is that history department now. So any of the questions that you would have asked of that department you can now ask us. We’re pulling from those same materials.
Jonathon: It’s coming back to me. I think the reference actually comes from a fellow who interviewed her during what has come to be known as the “next friends” suit.
spirituality.com host: Can you tell a little bit about what that was—the “next friends” suit?
Jonathon: Well, yes. The “next friends” suit was a case that ostensibly was being done in Mary Baker Eddy’s own interest, but really, the motivation was not that. It was generated through sort of a line of people. A lot of the industry and energy behind the suit came from a detractor, a gentleman named Frederick Peabody, who had been involved in prior lawsuits against Mary Baker Eddy. And the suit was brought against her in the state of New Hampshire.
The idea was that she was no longer competent to manage her own affairs, and that, in fact, people in her household were taking advantage of her. It was brought forward with people—even her own son came forward as somebody who was representing…or one of the “next friends.”
As a result, she had to go through these interviews to establish that, in fact, she was of sound mind and able to direct her own affairs. And this individual came, and I believe—was he referred to as an “alienist” or…?
Sherry: Yes.
Jonathon: And he came to interview her and…
spirituality.com host: What would an alienist be? Is that like a psychologist?
Jonathon: Right, yeah.
Sherry: Yes.
Jonathon: Exactly. Really to determine her state of mind. And he was not only impressed by her mental capacity, but really touched by her nature. And in recording his impressions of his interview, he says something to the effect that “her sole desire is for the betterment of humanity.” And I believe that that’s where that part of the name of the Library comes from, is his record.
spirituality.com host: This is one I think we’ve answered, but maybe we should just recapitulate. It’s from someone in San Francisco, who says, “What is available to people who aren’t able to visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library—either online or by snail mail? I’m referring to items that you can’t find elsewhere.”
Sherry: Sure. I’m happy to talk about this again. As I said earlier, there are plenty of things that we make available to people, from letters where people will contact us and say, “Did Mary Baker Eddy ever say anything on Sunday School?” And we can send them the documentation we have where she talks about Sunday School. We can also send them copies of reminiscences. Let’s say that they’re interested in Clara Shannon, who was someone who worked in her household—we can send people copies of those. There’s a photocopying fee and small service charge to make those things available, but anything you can think of, you should definitely ask if it’s possible for us to…. We really try to make the Library accessible to people all over the world. We’ve actively put together, as I mentioned earlier, compilations of letters, generally thematic, like I mentioned, “Advice to healers” is one where we’ve pulled out letters where she talks about the role of healing or Christian Science practice. We have another compilation, for example, where she talks about Science and Health. So it’s all letters where she makes reference to sort of her vision for it or things like that. So we really try to accommodate people who can’t come to Boston.
spirituality.com host: This is from “Friends in Boston:” “We have someone who worked for the Library, and the reference goes something like this, referring to the name: ‘All my work, all my tears, all my efforts are not just for my own dear church workers, but for all mankind.’” Does that sound familiar?
Jonathon: Yeah. I’m not sure it’s exactly right, but it’s close. “All my tears, all my….”
Sherry: Is that the interview that’s in The New York American?
Jonathon: That’s correct, yeah.
Sherry: I don’t remember the complete citation, but we can have that available if someone wants to contact us.
Jonathon: Yeah, it was included as part of the audio-visual presentation in the Mapparium as the conclusion of that presentation, but it was replaced by another quotation, so it’s no longer part of the exhibit experience. So maybe that’s what she’s referring to.
spirituality.com host: Aha. Well, I’d just like to include one little plug for something that you can buy. It’s not inexpensive, but the Library does have a wonderful book called, In My True Light and Life. And it includes reminiscences and many other aspects of the Library’s collection that I personally have found quite helpful. And of course, if you’re in the area, you could probably just check it out. There are some Reading Rooms that would have it, and that’s another way to find out more about Mary Baker Eddy, Trailblazer and Healer. There’s a lot of inspiration in that particular book.
But, again, there’s a lot of free material on the website, and we’re so glad that you were willing to join us. Do you have some final comments you’d like to make?
Sherry: Just to say thank you. These have been really great questions, and I hope that the chat has encouraged people to dig more deeply into her life and her writings. It is a wonderfully inspiring story.
Jonathon: Yeah, I hope that this is just a beginning of a conversation, and that we can continue it through email questions, telephone questions, and exchanges to the Library.
So, again, I share Sherry’s sentiment of being very grateful for these questions. They’re excellent questions—very thought-provoking.
spirituality.com host: Well, thank you both for being here.
To find out more about Mary Baker Eddy and the Library, as we mentioned before, you can go to www.marybakereddylibrary.org, and you can always contact the Research Room with your questions by writing research@mbelibrary.org.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health