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00:00:04I came to Boston 80 years ago to play a concert, you know, in the streets. All I heard was
00:00:12Mary
00:00:12Baker Eddy. They gave me a paper up to my room, and I started to read all about Mary Baker
00:00:19Eddy,
00:00:19and the different papers had different accounts, and some of them praised her to high heaven,
00:00:25and others took her to terms. I'll tell you some of the most terrible things I ever read.
00:00:33As the 20th century began, Mary Baker Eddy was among the most controversial figures in the United
00:00:39States. Other American women were controversial. The reformers Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady
00:00:48Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, but few aroused feelings so intense and so contradictory.
00:00:56Sentimental is a girl, garrulous, ungrammatical, uncomprehensible, affected, vain of her little
00:01:05human ancestry, unstable, inconsistent, and unreliable in statement, and naively and
00:01:12everlastingly self-contradictory. The founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton, said,
00:01:21love permeates all the teachings of this great woman. So great, I believe, that at this perspective,
00:01:30we can scarcely realize how great. Those adjectives of Mark Twain, sentimental, affected, inconsistent, and
00:01:39vain, were the typical adjectives used by male chauvinists of the time, who were uninterested in having their toes
00:01:46trodden on by women. Mary Baker Eddy is controversial because she is entirely opposed to all the
00:01:54limited conventional ways of looking at the world. And again and again, when one thinks of her life
00:01:59from different perspectives, one finds this uncompromising attitude, which is really the
00:02:03prophetic attitude. She certainly thought there was something profoundly wrong in the way almost everybody
00:02:08had arranged things, that they took for granted that evil was dominant in the world and had to be,
00:02:14that therefore disease and death had the last word, and you could maybe whisper or shout back to it.
00:02:19You know, we think of as a sweet old Victorian lady, a lot of people do, and she was tough
00:02:25-minded.
00:02:26She was in protest against the idea of human slavery. Now, her concept of slavery was much larger,
00:02:34and it included these terrible sentences that we all seem to be under, which is whether it's disease,
00:02:39or poverty, or war, or pestilence.
00:02:51Difficulty, abnegation, constant battle against the world, the flesh and evil,
00:02:58tell my long-kept secret, evidence a heart holy in protest and unutterable in love.
00:03:26Mary Bagaretti's long life of nearly 90 years began on a New Hampshire farm in Bowie, where she was born
00:03:33in rural obscurity in 1821.
00:03:37By the time she died in 1910, she had become the first American woman to found a religious denomination,
00:03:44Christian science.
00:03:47At the midpoint of her life, she claimed to have discovered a scientific truth more fundamental
00:03:52than material law, a Christian truth that contradicted some of the most cherished Orthodox beliefs.
00:03:59But her protest against the view that suffering and pain are God's will began in the New England of her
00:04:06girlhood years.
00:04:16I became early a child of the church, an eager lover and student of vital Christianity.
00:04:27Boe in the 1820s was a community of Yankee farmers nestled in the hills near Concord, New Hampshire,
00:04:33some 70 miles from Boston. 19th century America was a land of flourishing canals and fast-growing commerce.
00:04:42But in Boe, the spirit of New England Puritanism was very much alive.
00:05:00For Mary's staunchly Calvinist parents, life was to be lived in the sight of God.
00:05:09Evening and morning, the family assembled for prayers.
00:05:14Know therefore this day, and consider it in thy heart,
00:05:21that the Lord, he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath there is none else.
00:05:29It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.
00:05:38In New England you had the Bible, you had the fathers, you had the transcendentalists,
00:05:45you have all these things around. And I think that she has that available to her,
00:05:50not in the conscious sense of going to the library in the morning and looking it up,
00:05:54but in the unconscious sense of being nurtured in it.
00:05:58In her father, Mark Baker, Mary found a darker side of her Calvinist heritage.
00:06:05My father possessed a strong intellect and an iron will. He held the family in the tightest
00:06:12harness I have ever known. His relentless theology emphasized belief in a final judgment day,
00:06:19in the danger of endless punishment, and in a Jehovah, merciless towards unbelievers.
00:06:27Now, the dramatic objection she had to particularly her father's view of double predestination,
00:06:33that souls are predestined either to hell or to heaven, that shocked her system. But still,
00:06:37I think that her father was good bedrock for her, and she wouldn't have plunged so deeply into this
00:06:45question if it hadn't been her father who was affirming this doctrine.
00:06:49Her mother's deep sympathy gave Mary a basis on which to question her father's theology.
00:06:55One day, she asked her mother if eternal punishment were true. Her mother replied,
00:07:02Mary, I suppose it is.
00:07:06What if we repent and tell God we are sorry and will not do so again? Will God punish us?
00:07:13Then he is not as good as my mother, and he will find me a hard case.
00:07:19The conflict in her early religious life reached the point of crisis when she was 17
00:07:25and applied for membership in her parents' church.
00:07:29I was unwilling to be saved if my brothers and sisters were to be numbered among those who were
00:07:35doomed to perpetual banishment from God. To the astonishment of many, the good clergyman's heart
00:07:42melted, and he received me into their communion and my protest along with me.
00:07:51The issue of suffering was more than a theological question for Mary.
00:07:54She was life-loving and curious, and through her brilliant older brother, Albert,
00:08:00found access to the world of books and ideas.
00:08:05But her education was curtailed by illness.
00:08:09Her health was so delicate that family members doubted if she would survive at all.
00:08:16Mary spent the last week with me and appears quite comfortable,
00:08:21but the poor girl can never enjoy life as most of us can, should she live any time.
00:08:27And this is altogether uncertain. Abigail Baker Tilton.
00:08:32I think what is unique about Mrs. Eddie's early childhood is that through her body and the bodily
00:08:38illnesses, she learned emotionally inside about the precariousness of life.
00:08:45She sensed an inner fragmentation and even death, an annihilation. But instead of giving in to that
00:08:52inner fragmentation and fears of annihilation and that overwhelming, unspeakable anxiety,
00:08:58Mrs. Eddie's always reminded me of a small child who shakes his fist at the world of 19th century
00:09:05predestination. She knows there is something more.
00:09:15St. Paul declared that the law was the schoolmaster to bring him to Christ.
00:09:20Even so was I led into the mazes of divine metaphysics through the gospel of suffering,
00:09:26the providence of God, and the cross of Christ.
00:09:37The question of suffering was to become more urgent.
00:09:45Years of loss and isolation were beginning.
00:09:48In 1841, her brother Albert died. Two years later, she married George Washington Glover,
00:09:56a friend of her brother's, and moved with him to South Carolina.
00:10:02Six months later, he died.
00:10:06His widow, now pregnant, made the grueling journey back to her parents' home in New Hampshire.
00:10:15In 1849, her mother, always her dearest friend, died.
00:10:22Mary's own health deteriorated to the point that her son George was placed in the hands of foster parents.
00:10:28She struggled against these circumstances, contributing poems and essays to New England magazines,
00:10:35starting at kindergarten. But she could not find independence.
00:10:49I want to learn to play on a piano, so that I can go south and teach.
00:10:55It is all I shall ever be able to do, and this one's accomplished, and I am independent.
00:11:01Oh, how I wish I had a father that had been ever willing to let me know something.
00:11:13I am.
00:11:15Trying to rebuild her life, she married an itinerant dentist named Daniel Patterson.
00:11:20The Pattersons moved to the remote village of North Groton in the foothills of the White Mountains of New Hampshire,
00:11:25where her son George lived with his foster parents.
00:11:30Patterson had promised to provide a home for the boy, but Elmira Smith, a blind girl who worked for the
00:11:36couple, recalled.
00:11:38Mrs. Patterson grieved and worried because she could not see her child.
00:11:44But Patterson would not let him come near, and without her knowing it one day,
00:11:48the foster parents moved away, out west, and took the boy with them.
00:11:55George Glover was told that his mother was dead.
00:12:00She would not see him again for nearly 25 years.
00:12:10Her health broke. Years of almost total invalidism began.
00:12:26My blind sister, Myra Smith, worked for Mrs. Patterson.
00:12:30Consequently, I was at the house two or three times a week.
00:12:34She was ill nearly all the time and would lie in bed with a book for her constant companion.
00:12:40But when I came up to the bedside, she would lay aside her book and say,
00:12:44Oh, you dear little girl, I wish you were mine.
00:12:52We lived practically alone. She had very few visitors or callers.
00:12:56And the doctor was away all day and sometimes for days.
00:13:01Besides, Mrs. Patterson went out very little during this time.
00:13:07In 1859, Patterson's business failed. The mortgage on their home was foreclosed.
00:13:14Their belongings auctioned off.
00:13:20Abby accompanied her ailing sister to a boarding house in a nearby town.
00:13:26Mrs. Hilton and myself rode in the carriage with Mrs. Patterson.
00:13:30It was in the spring and the roads were very bad.
00:13:33I walked the greater part of the way to Romney and was very tired.
00:13:38And Mrs. Hilton walked in with me so she would not hear the moans and grief of Mrs. Patterson.
00:13:49Is this crushing out of life, of hope, of love, thy will, O God?
00:13:56Then stay me from above, for my sick soul is darkened unto death.
00:14:05Dr. Her physical problems, the delicacy of her system, all of the unhappy things that happened to
00:14:10her seem to all be converging on her to purify her, to make her experience the kind of renunciation
00:14:16that traditional spiritual practitioners have done, whether they've gone to the desert or
00:14:20gone to the monastery. She was in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey with John the Baptist,
00:14:26right there in the middle of New England. And not because of her own personal choice or
00:14:29or some role she thought she was playing, but simply because life, the discipline of
00:14:34of the divine call imposed this on her.
00:14:40From my very childhood, I was impelled by a hunger and thirst after divine things,
00:14:47a desire for something higher and better than matter. And apart from it,
00:14:52to seek diligently for the knowledge of God as the one great and ever-present relief from human woe.
00:15:04Despite the disappointments, she plodded on with an incredible curiosity.
00:15:10She was fighting against what she could see as her circumstances, her limitations, and she just kept
00:15:18trying. And it's an odyssey that is curious because of the fact she didn't give up against
00:15:25odds that normally would put someone off.
00:15:28This curiosity led her to explore a variety of ways of getting well.
00:15:34One of them was the alternative medical system called homeopathy.
00:15:39It held that the smaller the dose of a drug, the greater would be its effect.
00:15:48A case of dropsy given up by the faculty fell into my hands. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of
00:15:56Argentum Nitratum with occasional doses of a high attenuation of sulfurous.
00:16:02It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets and watch the result.
00:16:08I did so, and she continued to gain.
00:16:12It made plain to me that mind governed the whole question of her recovery.
00:16:19When she was finding that there was practically no medicine left, then that still healed.
00:16:25What did that say? There was something there that might answer the question of suffering.
00:16:32Her homeopathic experiments convinced Mrs. Patterson that disease had a mental cause,
00:16:37that suffering came not from God, but from the human mind. But homeopathy had not healed her.
00:16:44She then appealed for aid to the one person in New England who was thinking most originally about
00:16:50non-medical means of cure. According to this new theory, disease is the invention of man.
00:16:58It is caused by a disturbance of the mind and therefore originates there.
00:17:04The only way to eradicate disease must be through this mind, Phineas P. Quimby.
00:17:13Phineas Quimby was a pioneer in what we would today call suggestive therapeutics.
00:17:21As a result of experiments with hypnotism, or mesmerism as it was then termed,
00:17:27he believed diseases were caused by the mind and could be made subservient to the will.
00:17:34Mrs. Patterson came last Friday and is boarding at Mrs. Hunter's.
00:17:38No one thought she could live to travel so far, but today she and I went up into the dome
00:17:44of the
00:17:44New City Building, up seven flights of stairs, or 182 steps. So much for Dr. Quimby's doings.
00:17:54Julius Dresser.
00:17:57Although Mrs. Patterson temporarily improved under Quimby's treatment,
00:18:02her basic religious question remained unanswered.
00:18:05How could one find relief from human woe through a deeper knowledge of God?
00:18:13The next few years were to test her ability to separate her search for truth
00:18:18from the magnetism of a powerful personality.
00:18:21In later years, looking back on her contact with Quimby, Mrs. Eddy said,
00:18:27I actually loved him. I mean his high and noble character.
00:18:31But when I found that Quimbyism was too short and would not answer the cry of the human heart for
00:18:37soccer, for real aid, I went, being driven there by my extremity, to the Bible.
00:18:44And there I discovered Christian Science.
00:18:52The Divine Hand led me into a new world of light and life, a fresh universe,
00:18:59old to God, but new to his little one.
00:19:11On February 3, 1866, an item appeared in a Lynn newspaper, which probably attracted little attention.
00:19:20Mrs. Mary M. Patterson of Swampscut fell upon the ice near the corner of Market and Oxford streets,
00:19:26and was severely injured. She was taken up in an insensible condition and carried to the residence
00:19:32of S. M. Boubier. Dr. Cushing, who was called, found her injuries to be internal and of a very serious
00:19:39nature,
00:19:39inducing spasms and intense suffering. She was removed to her home in Swampscut yesterday afternoon,
00:19:46though in a very critical condition.
00:19:48Her husband was summoned by telegraph. The local minister came through the sub-zero weather.
00:19:54Friends watched with her. Some did not expect her to live.
00:20:01She asked to be left alone with her Bible. As she later recalled, she read a gospel account of one
00:20:08of
00:20:08Jesus' healings and felt the presence of God. This moment of spiritual light was so intense
00:20:17that it transformed her and restored her health.
00:20:21That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to
00:20:29others. Namely, life in and of spirit. This life being the sole reality of existence.
00:20:42She got up, dressed, and joined her friends in the next room.
00:20:48At 45, Mary Baker had crossed a threshold. She had glimpsed that spirit was the sole reality of existence,
00:20:56which would be the basis of a religious teaching. 45 years of work, and all she was to accomplish, lay
00:21:04ahead.
00:21:08Recalling this experience later, Mrs. Eddy described it to one of her students, and this is what he said about
00:21:14it.
00:21:15At that time, it was not clear to Mrs. Eddy by what process she had been instantaneously healed,
00:21:21but she knew that her thought had turned away from all else in contemplation of God. His omnipotence and
00:21:29ever-presence. His infinite love and power. It eventually dawned upon her that this overwhelming
00:21:37consciousness of the divine presence had destroyed her fear and consciousness of disease exactly as light
00:21:44dispels the darkness. To understand what she had glimpsed in her Swampscott room would take years of
00:21:53scriptural research, writing, and healing practice. The outward circumstances of her life at this time were
00:22:01bleak. She was deserted by Patterson, whom she later divorced. Alone and misunderstood, she moved from
00:22:09residence to residence in eastern Massachusetts. O weary heart, O tired sigh, alone to live, alone to die,
00:22:21yet not alone, for oft I see bright forms that look in love on me.
00:22:32She carried with her only a few possessions. The most precious were her bible and a growing sheaf of
00:22:39paper she was writing, exploring its meaning.
00:22:47Lucy Wentworth was a teenager when Mrs. Patterson stayed at her parents' home in Stoughton.
00:22:52I used to be with her every minute she was not writing or otherwise engaged. We talked and read
00:22:59together. I idolized her and really suffered when she locked her door to work and would not let me
00:23:05come to her. She worked for hours.
00:23:15Her growing conviction that the consciousness of God's presence could destroy suffering was
00:23:21confirmed by her healing work during these years. In 1867, she was summoned back to Sanborn.
00:23:30Her niece Ellen lay dying of enteritis, given up by three doctors. Ellen's mother later recalled that
00:23:38Mrs. Patterson entered the room, prayed silently for a few moments, then asked the girl to rise.
00:23:47For two weeks she could only be moved on a sheet from bed to bed. She walked across the floor
00:23:54at Mrs.
00:23:55Patterson's bidding and did so without suffering. The next day she was dressed and went down to the
00:24:01table. The fourth day she went a journey of about a hundred miles. Such a change came over the household.
00:24:09We all felt the angel of the Lord appeared and glory shone round. Martha Rand Baker.
00:24:17Mrs. Eddy didn't see these sorts of experiences as miracles in the usual sense of the term. She didn't
00:24:23see them as interruptions of the natural order, so much as expressions of what she called
00:24:29spiritual law of repeatable and discoverable conditions of experience. And what they meant to
00:24:36her was that what we call matter isn't really the objective substance that we ordinarily think it is.
00:24:45That rather it expresses the limits of the human mentality and its perception of spiritual creation, which
00:24:53she held was the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of and which she said is present to be brought
00:24:59to light.
00:25:00So when the human mentality yields to God's kingdom, his government, his will, his intention, which she
00:25:08feels is always good, then material conditions change and healing happens. And she said this was the basis of
00:25:16healing in New Testament times that she has rediscovered and made available in our own time.
00:25:27I only wish I were able to launch into the fullness of Christ and embrace the whole world in my
00:25:35love.
00:25:41For the time, her world was to remain small. In 1870, she moved to the shoe manufacturing town of Lynn,
00:25:4812 miles from Boston.
00:26:06Here, mostly among shoe factory workers, she found her first audience.
00:26:14She began to teach small classes in a room above a school.
00:26:24Wanting to share more widely what she had discovered, she began writing a book.
00:26:32I have known her when nearly crushed with sorrow, but she wrote on.
00:26:38I have known her when friend after friend deserted her, but she wrote on.
00:26:43I have seen student after student bring ridicule and reproach upon her, but still she wrote on.
00:26:53Putney Bancroft.
00:26:58Some afternoons, she would walk along Lynn Beach carrying her manuscript,
00:27:04and make her way to Red Rock, where she would write for hours.
00:27:11Jesus taught and proved by demonstration our dominion over matter.
00:27:17Even now, in prophetic vision, we see man free as the sons of God, and matter no longer his master.
00:27:27Oh, highest conceptions of spiritual sense tell us, what is love?
00:27:44In 1875, in an attic room, the manuscript was finished.
00:27:49She called it science and health.
00:27:54Science and health, in my opinion, is a unique piece of writing.
00:28:00Obviously, she had had some experience as a writer, but at the age of 45,
00:28:06to decide to write a book that she hoped, and she said it very openly,
00:28:12she hoped would revolutionize the thought of the world, and she wrote other books.
00:28:18But this was the book that she kept returning to, and she kept making demands on herself as a writer.
00:28:24She wanted to make clear that spiritual ideas were useful in the most mundane circumstances.
00:28:35It is not an indulgent work at all.
00:28:37It is not a work of ego. It's a very practical work. It's the work that says, here it is.
00:28:45I'm asking you, the reader, to take part.
00:28:49It seemed unlikely that the little circle which met fortnightly in the parlor at 8 Broad Street
00:28:55would make an impact on Lynn, much less on the world.
00:28:59Their teacher was less alone now.
00:29:02One of her students, Asa Gilbert Eddy, had been the first to advertise as a Christian science healer.
00:29:09In 1877, they married, and the teacher of Christian science became Mary Baker Eddy.
00:29:16But her group of followers in Lynn remained small.
00:29:26The first Christian science Sunday service I ever attended was at this time,
00:29:31and was held in the little parlor at 8 Broad Street, Lynn.
00:29:35There were about 20 people present.
00:29:38Mrs. Eddy preached the sermon which healed a young woman sitting near me of an old chronic trouble
00:29:44which physicians were unable to heal.
00:29:48That was the greatest sermon I had ever heard.
00:29:52But few were there to hear it.
00:29:55Julia Bartlett
00:30:04About the same number joined with Mrs. Eddy in 1879 to found the Church of Christ Scientist.
00:30:12It was dedicated to practicing the Christianity which Christ taught.
00:30:18But two years after the Church was formed, dissension among its members left the movement in ruins.
00:30:24Her years in Lynn ended with little to show.
00:30:35Shepard, show me how to go o'er the hillside steep, how to gather, how to sow, how to feed
00:30:44thy sheep.
00:30:45I will listen for thy voice, lest my footsteps stray.
00:30:50I will follow and rejoice all the rugged way.
00:31:25all the Hastings and the BC is very happy.
00:31:47Boston, in the 1880s, was a place where new ideas could at least get a hearing.
00:31:52Her work there over the next seven years launched Christian science into American
00:31:58religious life, but not before she had passed through a personal crisis that almost broke
00:32:05her. Within a month of their arrival in Boston, Asa Eddy died. He had been stung by the opposition
00:32:14and malice his wife encountered, especially from former students who had turned against
00:32:19her sister. Despite the apparent physical cause of death, she felt he had been a victim of
00:32:27this hate. Nearly overcome with grief, she retreated to her friend's home in Vermont.
00:32:42Dear student, I am situated as pleasantly as I can be in the absence of the one true heart. It
00:32:51has been so
00:32:51much to me. I shall never master this point of missing him all the time. I would like more than
00:32:59ever to be myself again, but I question my ability to walk over all, only as God gives me aid
00:33:06that I
00:33:06never have had before.
00:33:11In six weeks, she returned to Boston with renewed energy and determination. In a little
00:33:18hall on the edge of Boston Common, she resumed a series of weekly sermons which drew attention to
00:33:23the new movement. Soon she was addressing audiences in other larger Boston halls.
00:33:31What is the kingdom of heaven, the abode of spirit, the realm of the real? No matter is there, no
00:33:41night is there,
00:33:42nothing that maketh or worketh a lie. Is this kingdom far off? No. It is ever present here.
00:33:54As Christian science grew, the demands on Mrs. Eddy multiplied. She wrote prolifically, began a magazine,
00:34:03produced a major revision of her book, now titled, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
00:34:11Most of her energies were poured into teaching others how to heal. In Boston's South End, she opened one of
00:34:20the
00:34:20city's most unusual charted educational institutions.
00:34:25Class opened Monday morning. It numbered 30. She said if we were struggling all the time, fasting and praying,
00:34:33and are unsatisfied, it is a very hopeful condition.
00:34:39Instead of serving Christianity on ice and bringing on the chills, she made it appear a thing of daily love
00:34:46and devotion to suffering humanity.
00:34:50Out of darkness and bewilderment, an illumination encircled me, and I felt and knew and realized God's ever presence.
00:35:01At the end of the class, Mrs. Eddy asked me what I thought of it and what I was going
00:35:07to do with what she had imparted to me.
00:35:09I answered, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. She said, you are going to heal with
00:35:17it.
00:35:21When she sent them out to heal, she asked both the men and the women to do exactly the same,
00:35:26and they were also to face up to the dark side of life with the sense of courage in which
00:35:35Jesus had approached the evils of the world,
00:35:38a sense of the omnipotence of good.
00:35:43No power can withstand divine love.
00:35:48Whatever enslaves man is opposed to the divine government.
00:35:55Truth makes man free.
00:35:57Love is the liberator.
00:36:03After graduating, Mrs. Eddy's students dispersed to their cities and towns
00:36:07to practice what they had learned, healing others and forming churches.
00:36:12By 1885, Christian science was catching on, and Boston's clergymen were worried.
00:36:19One has only to open the published volumes of its Lady Apostle in this city
00:36:25to find such a creed of pantheism and blasphemy as has been rarely compounded.
00:36:32Mrs. Eddy saw her movement as practical Christianity,
00:36:36as a return to the living basis of Christianity,
00:36:39and something which had deep effects in one's life.
00:36:42And she never varied from that commitment to Christianity,
00:36:46as so many alternative movements did in her day and are doing so now.
00:36:50In a sense, that's why the fights were so bad.
00:36:54You're not challenged nearly as much by a Buddhist as you are by somebody who grew up on the Jewish
00:36:58and the Christian scriptures.
00:37:01And cousins fight more than remote people, and brothers and sisters fight more than cousins.
00:37:07Mrs. Eddy's conflict with the clergy was only part of the turmoil of her Boston years.
00:37:13The movement was growing, but a flood of healing groups known as mind cures came close to drowning it out.
00:37:22She had said that healing came from the yielding of the human mind to what she called the mind that
00:37:27is God.
00:37:28For them, on the other hand, healing came from the powers of the human mind,
00:37:33from what they called the God within, from the mind which she felt not only engendered disease,
00:37:39but was capable of the most lethal, of the most lethal hostility.
00:37:44By the late 1880s, Christian science and mind cure were thoroughly confused in the press and public mind.
00:37:54At the same time, the demands on her were often overwhelming.
00:37:58Just when Christian science was outgrowing Boston, and it was necessary to think about its future.
00:38:05To the shock of her students, in 1889 she closed the college, resigned her pastorate,
00:38:12dismantled the existing organizations of her church, and left Boston for Concord, New Hampshire.
00:38:26I want stillness and nature and God.
00:38:30Oh, I get so near him when I can be alone, that I dread to be interrupted, but I am
00:38:36all the time.
00:38:38In the broad range of religious tradition, Roger Williams saying,
00:38:44I cannot lead a religion, I must develop my own soul.
00:38:49This seems to me to be something that a religious thinker has to have.
00:38:56And I think that every person goes through a period when you need yourself and time more than you need
00:39:05any stimulus of status or organization or anything else.
00:39:11I find that one of the more understandable aspects in a long career.
00:39:19One day, about a mile and a half west of Concord on Pleasant Street, she found an old farmhouse for
00:39:25sale.
00:39:29The growing household included a cook, a groundskeeper, and a secretary, Calvin Frye.
00:39:38The spiritual household that Mrs. Eddy set up at Pleasant View is an incredible chapter in religious history.
00:39:46The nature of life at Pleasant View was one of great naturalness and simplicity,
00:39:52that the spiritual life was not something strange or esoteric or over and against ordinary life.
00:39:57So it's an entirely extraordinary mode of living, an entirely extraordinary mode of communion,
00:40:03but just transparently there in an ordinary New England setting.
00:40:08The sweet, sacred sense and permanence of man's unity with his maker in science
00:40:16illumines our present existence with the ever-presence and power of God, good.
00:40:27At Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy became more involved than ever in directing the affairs of the flourishing movement,
00:40:34counseling her students through letters and personal visits,
00:40:38and nurturing the spiritual growth of her household staff.
00:40:42Mrs. Eddy had that rare gift of losing herself in her ministration to another with whomsoever she was conversing.
00:40:55That one was, for the moment, the whole world to her.
00:41:02It was as though she and her visitor were alone with God,
00:41:08and her whole attention and love were given for the moment to only one consciousness.
00:41:19To be around Mrs. Eddy would have always been on, I think, your toes.
00:41:26She was constantly, I think, on changing her temperament.
00:41:32In one moment she could be relaxed, whimsical even, and in an engaging way childlike.
00:41:40But in an instant she could flare up and be an extremely demanding leader who could rebuke her followers.
00:41:48If you strayed one step off the path, you could really be in some trouble with her.
00:41:57At Pleasant View, hours of work were balanced by moments of light and joy and relaxation.
00:42:08In the midst of a rigorous routine, Mrs. Eddy took time for a daily carriage ride around Concord.
00:42:35I have uttered some of my best prayers in a carriage.
00:42:54There were struggles and anguish at Pleasant View as well.
00:42:59There are too many dark pages in her writings and in her letters.
00:43:04She had to face things in her family and among her best friends,
00:43:09in the organization of the church which demanded the stamina,
00:43:13and she will often confess how she has days in which something clouds her or whatever.
00:43:18That's very different from the merely sunny, possibility-thinking kind of approach.
00:43:23And I think that was an element of a realism for which she had a philosophical or religious answer,
00:43:30but existentially she had to work it through just like anybody down the block.
00:43:35Calvin Fry's diaries tell of Mrs. Eddy awakening at 3 a.m. in acute pain.
00:43:42A member of the household called her attention to a passage in the New Testament.
00:43:48She read the chapter and immediately exclaimed,
00:43:52I have got back my God,
00:43:54and was comforted and relieved and had a restful sleep.
00:44:08O gentle presence, peace and joy and power,
00:44:12O life divine that owns each waiting hour,
00:44:16Thou love that guards the nestling's faltering flight,
00:44:20Keep thou my child on upward wing tonight.
00:44:25The America of Mrs. Eddy's pleasant view years was a tough, organized world in which big business and trusts flourished.
00:44:35During these years, Mrs. Eddy sought to fashion a church which would survive her and survive in this world,
00:44:42but not as just another institution.
00:44:45It must be a living protest against the dogmatism she saw as restricting the Christian spirit.
00:44:56She introduced innovations aimed at spiritualizing church services.
00:45:00Personal preaching was abolished.
00:45:03Two members elected from the congregation would read from the Bible and science and health.
00:45:11At Wednesday meetings, people spoke spontaneously about their experiences of God which had healed them.
00:45:19Each congregation would direct its own affairs as a branch of the Mother Church in Boston.
00:45:26The Mother Church would be governed, not by charismatic leaders, but by rules.
00:45:31She published these rules in the Slim Manual of the Mother Church in 1895,
00:45:37which she revised over the next 15 years.
00:45:43Mrs. Eddy established a church, and that church has continued on now for 80 years.
00:45:47She established that church without the traditional forms that her childhood church had had and all the mainline churches had
00:45:55had.
00:45:56Namely, a clergy. No clergy. A ritual. No ritual. A creed. No creed.
00:46:02She established a church where men and women were totally equal.
00:46:06Men and women have access to all positions.
00:46:09Could she have arrived at this through a plan or analysis? I doubt it.
00:46:13I think that she was responding, if you will, as a mother responds to her babe.
00:46:21Four years after she left Boston, she instructed her students to carry out plans for building a church there.
00:46:28She insisted that they finish it by the last day of 1894, just over a year's time.
00:46:36Labor disputes, a national economic depression, and an early snow slowed the work.
00:46:44Mrs. Eddy impelled it forward.
00:46:48On the night of December 29th, laborers and church members worked late to complete the last painting, polishing, and scrubbing.
00:47:04Services were held the next day.
00:47:07Mrs. Eddy did not attend.
00:47:10But one April afternoon, three months later, accompanied only by a few students, she entered her church.
00:47:19Clara Shannon described this moment of triumph and fulfillment.
00:47:25Mrs. Eddy walked up the aisle of the church facing the reader's desk, went very slowly, and at times would
00:47:33stand still, look up and around.
00:48:00This she continued to do until she reached the platform where she knelt on the first step.
00:48:10Then she stood behind the reader's desk for some moments, and she repeated,
00:48:15Mrs. Eddy did.
00:48:19Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.
00:48:25I am weak, but thou art mighty.
00:48:28Hold me with thy powerful hand.
00:48:31Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.
00:48:34Feed me till I want no more.
00:49:00I stand in relation to this century as a Christian discoverer, founder, and leader.
00:49:09As the 20th century began, new Christian science churches were opening at the rate of one a week.
00:49:16And science and health was nearing its 200th printing.
00:49:22Mrs. Eddy had become an internationally known figure, as well as an esteemed citizen of Concord.
00:49:29Her attendance in 1900 at the Concord State Fair became an occasion, and three or four times she invited groups
00:49:38of Christian scientists to gather for a visit at Pleasant View.
00:50:06But these personal appearances were rare.
00:50:12You would all the time encourage your followers, don't turn to me personally, don't look to me personally, don't glorify
00:50:20me.
00:50:21Read what I have written and read the Bible.
00:50:24Constantly directing them to science and health and to the Bible.
00:50:29What drew people to Christian science was not Mrs. Eddy's personality.
00:50:34Even Mark Twain noted,
00:50:35The thing back of it is holy, gracious, and beautiful.
00:50:41The power through loving mercifulness and compassion to heal fleshly ills and pains and griefs.
00:50:49This power was given by the Savior to the disciples and to all the converted.
00:50:56These things are true or they are not.
00:50:59If they were true 19 centuries ago, it would be difficult to explain why that power should be non-existent
00:51:06in Christians now.
00:51:12Few clergymen could deny Twain's logic, yet many of them call Christian science a heresy.
00:51:19And members of the medical profession called it a threat to health.
00:51:25By 1906 it appeared that the threat was increasing.
00:51:28The original Mother Church had been outgrown.
00:51:34A new symbol of the growth of Christian science rose on the Boston skyline.
00:51:42A large crowd attended the dedication of a new edifice.
00:51:48The feeling of triumph was in the air.
00:51:51は J.レ.
00:52:23In the busy solitude of her study at Pleasant View, the 85-year-old woman labored on,
00:52:30corresponding with church officials and cautioning the more confident.
00:52:36Unless there is less teaching, less church-making, and better healing, and more of it,
00:52:42our denomination will sink into the slew of past sects in having a religion of the letter without the spirit,
00:52:50of doctrine without demonstration.
00:52:56Even as she wrote, an attack was mounting that threatened to undo her entire life's work.
00:53:03Mrs. Eddy's life revolved around the idea that Jesus' works illustrated a science of Christian healing that can be practiced
00:53:12now.
00:53:13That, as people draw closer to God, the sins and ills that result from blindness to what she held to
00:53:20be his absolute presence and power can be healed.
00:53:25However you interpret it, people were being healed by practicing what Mrs. Eddy taught.
00:53:32It was this healing that made the movement grow, but it was also this healing that was making Mrs. Eddy
00:53:38herself so controversial.
00:53:41In late 1906, a muck-breaking series on her life began in McClure's magazine.
00:53:47Joseph Pulitzer's New York World launched a blatant anti-Eddy campaign depicting her as decrepit, mentally unbalanced, and near death.
00:53:58To keep the story alive, the world hired ex-Senator William Chandler to initiate a lawsuit against her.
00:54:05Her son, George Glover, now lived in the West and had only intermittent contact with his mother.
00:54:12Chandler convinced him and other family members that she was incompetent
00:54:16and a virtual prisoner of her secretary, Calvin Fry, and others at Pleasant View.
00:54:22At Chandler's bidding, they filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court in Concord to take control of her affairs
00:54:28on the grounds that she was mentally incompetent.
00:54:35But Chandler's opening speech declared her religious ideas insane.
00:54:42Knowing very well that she was a woman, knowing that she had age against her,
00:54:49knowing that the odds were really stacked, then what can you conclude?
00:54:58But no, she was fearful.
00:55:01She loved God and trusted Him, but that isn't to deny that there were tears during this crisis.
00:55:11The case climaxed when the court appointed three distinguished masters
00:55:16to interrogate Mrs. Eddy and determine her sanity.
00:55:20They arrived at Pleasant View accompanied by a stenographer
00:55:23and by the adversary counsel Chandler.
00:55:30As the masters entered her library that August afternoon in 1907,
00:55:34Mrs. Eddy's personal freedom and the future of her church hung in the balance.
00:55:42They tested her grasp of business matters, then pressed the issue of her mental competence.
00:55:51How many hours in the day do you keep your mind upon your work?
00:55:55Well, I rise in the morning early and have few hours during the day when I'm not at work,
00:56:01and I have the care of the house as much as I ever did.
00:56:05I can work hours at my work, day and night, without the slightest fatigue
00:56:10when it is in the line of spiritual labor.
00:56:19Do you write letters nowadays?
00:56:22I write them or dictate them.
00:56:24Others seldom write letters for me, save through dictation.
00:56:28Then I look them over and see if they are right.
00:56:33The master's questions grew more friendly.
00:56:37Do you read more or less, Mrs. Eddy?
00:56:40Every chance I get, for a rest.
00:56:44Are you fond of music?
00:56:46I used to be exceedingly,
00:56:48and I have an artificial singer in my house.
00:56:52I will have them show it to you in the vestibule.
00:56:56Mr. Fry, I want you to show them my artificial singer.
00:57:14Before leaving, Judge Aldridge spoke of his mother,
00:57:18who was about Mrs. Eddy's age.
00:57:21God bless her.
00:57:22She is not a day older for her 87 years if she is growing in grace.
00:57:27Now, my thought is that if we keep our mind fixed on truth,
00:57:32God, life, and love,
00:57:34he will advance us in our years to a higher understanding.
00:57:38He will change our hope into faith,
00:57:42our faith into spiritual understanding,
00:57:45our words into works,
00:57:47and our ultimate into the fruition of entering into the kingdom.
00:57:55On his way out, Chandler was heard to comment,
00:57:58That woman is sharper than a steel trap.
00:58:03Three days later, he withdrew the case.
00:58:06The next friend's suit had collapsed.
00:58:27And what was it said?
00:58:40at first it seemed more a mansion than a home the house that I now occupy was purchased for me
00:58:48before I saw it or had any correct idea of its dimensions and expense when I looked on the house
00:58:56I now own I was shocked and went to my room and wept oh splendid misery in two smaller second
00:59:06story rooms she continued her work she was completing the years of labor she had devoted
00:59:12to science and health her textbook of practical spirituality the world they were focusing on an
00:59:24idea that she had had since 1878 early in the summer she began thinking and praying about a
00:59:31daily paper although for a time she said nothing about it she had written the name on a scrap of
00:59:38paper and laid it on her desk for some weeks before she gave the word to start it Adelaide still
00:59:45July
00:59:4828 1908 I request the Christian Science Board of Directors to start a daily newspaper called Christian
00:59:56Science Monitor this must be done without fail mrs. Eddy's editorial set the paper's mission the object
01:00:07of the monitor is to injure no man but to bless all mankind the monitor is based on the fundamentals
01:00:21that mrs. Eddy taught and expressed in her books it's based on the reality of the perfect ability of
01:00:31man if you will and on the fact that it's never necessary to accept the inevitability of doom disaster and
01:00:41tragedy you know the monitor deals with with hard stuff all right but it always tries to deal with it
01:00:49in
01:00:49perspective mrs. Eddy cared about what was going on in the world and she wanted people to think
01:00:54about it fairly and wisely working for the paper you always are trying to live up to mrs. Eddy's teaching
01:01:05which is to be fair-minded to be open above board to try and see the event in perspective to
01:01:15tell it
01:01:15straight in her last two years she entrusted the running of the church to its board of directors
01:01:27her inner life became increasingly her own
01:01:38she died in 1910 after a few days illness the church she founded would grow in the years that followed
01:01:54the monitor would expand and broaden its influence on the media other churches too would take up spiritual
01:02:02healing and while mrs. Eddy was not a feminist her life would be seen as a protest against the
01:02:10constraints placed on women she was woman identified in the sense that she knew that women had a particular
01:02:20role whether in the definition of god or in the definition of love or in the definition of
01:02:26personality and she was not ashamed of that role but rather expressed it and expressed it I think with
01:02:35a considerable flair mrs. Eddy is something more than complex I think we're all complex mrs. Eddy is is
01:02:43elusive at the moment you think you understand her another facet of her character comes in
01:02:49and it doesn't jive with what the previous one was I don't think mrs. Eddy can be reduced by anybody's
01:02:58theory no matter what it is whether it's coming from anthropology psychoanalysis psychology sociology
01:03:06she is she there are just so many facets to her I'm a student of religion and I'm not a
01:03:11Christian
01:03:11scientist I'm some extent a scholar and and I've read very widely in all the traditions of humanity
01:03:19but she she appealed to me instantly as someone who was in the category of of a Joan of Arc
01:03:26or of a
01:03:26Mother Teresa of Calcutta or of a Catherine of Siena I always work an assumption that all great people
01:03:31and I think she's a great person have a cosmic flaw and I have never quite located what hers is
01:03:40oh
01:03:41there's no doubt that in one sense she is doing what everyone from atheists like Sartre to intense
01:03:48believers like Pope John the 23rd are doing they are putting their banner up against forces of
01:03:55meaninglessness and saying I defy them I don't have to be merely passive I don't have to take them as
01:04:02they are and I think that there's a lot of that in her whether people can follow where her banner
01:04:10would
01:04:11lead is a very different question but I think one has to say that here is a steadfast decades-long
01:04:17attempt not thus to be overwhelmed during her long life of protest Mrs. Eddy had known suffering too
01:04:27well to believe that it could be ignored or wished away yet she concluded that every material limitation
01:04:35could be overcome by a God who is infinitely powerful and good she believed that only the most persistent
01:04:44practice of godliness and love could turn back the materialism which threatened to engulf the 20th
01:04:50century world to confront this materialism and comfort this world she left a church a religious teaching
01:05:04and a book a book which remains challenging because of the questions it asks and the answers it gives
01:05:14what is God our material means the only refuge from fatal chances the five corporeal senses constitute man
01:05:30if spirit is all and is everywhere what and where is matter
01:05:38she had explored these questions in her life and in her book which contained all she had experienced
01:05:45and found to be true we all must learn that life is God the central fact of the Bible is
01:05:56the superiority of
01:05:57spiritual over spiritual over physical power man is spiritual individual and eternal divine love is infinite
01:06:12therefore all that really exists is in and of God and manifests his love
01:06:48Within the rest of them
01:06:52they are unbadly