Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy

She was born in New England on a farm in Bow, New Hampshire. Her childhood and much of her adult life, before 1862, was spent in ill health. Although raised with Puritan values, daily Bible reading, and even the talk of God's healing power, she spent many years looking for healing in the many remedial methods available in her time. She became a patient of the New England healer Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, whose "medicine-free" healing techniques undoubtedly influenced her greatly. When she first visited Dr. Quimby in 1862 she was a virtual invalid, and with the good doctor's help her health quickly improved. The change was instantaneous. Her pain and weakness disappeared. A sense of comfort and well-being stepped into their place. Within a week she says that without help she climbed the one hundred eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall. And in this whole experience she furnished a clear illustration of the words Jesus spoke to the woman healed after twelve years' illness, "Thy faith hath made thee whole."

Whilst Christian Scientists may claim that the healing method employed by Mrs. Eddy was unique to her, any objective student will realise that there really is no essential difference between the methods taught and practised by Quimby and his later followers and those adopted by Mrs. Eddy. The basis is exactly the same, i.e. firstly the removal of fear from the patient, which Quimby accomplished by quietly explaining the mental causes of their malady to them, and then the replacing of this fear with faith, conviction, and firm expectation that they are healed. As it was exceedingly difficult for some of his patients to believe that healing could be affected in this way, he would often manipulate the patient's head in order for them to see that something had been done. In his manuscripts it becomes clear that he claimed no healing efficacy in this manipulating of the head, other than to help with the patient's faith. Quimby's conviction was that it is faith and expectation that invokes the Divine healing power, and whether one calls this power omnipresent Wisdom as Dr. Quimby did, or Divine Mind as Mrs Eddy did, or Universal Mind as many New Thoughters do, or God as most others do, makes no real difference. Jesus Himself said as much with His statement "Thy faith hath made thee whole."Despite all the controversy surrounding Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science movement, the Church of Christ, Scientist, which she formed in 1879, had spread around much of the world by the time she died, and one should not be over-critical of Mrs. Eddy, or underestimate the vital role that her rganizational skills played in getting this healing message to a worldwide audience.