Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was deprived of most of the joys of human motherhood. Through a series of circumstances she was denied the care of her only son from the time he was a very small boy. This experience seemed only to enhance the wealth of mother love that she later bestowed on her Church, which became to her the child she prayed over, watched, and guided.
In describing the true mother, she writes (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 90), "What other heart yearns with her solicitude, endures with her patience, waits with her hope, and labors with her love, to promote the welfare and happiness of her children?" As Mrs. Eddy mothered the growth of The Mother Church, so she wished her Church to mother the world.
In the year 1903, Mrs. Eddy was given a book called "Thoughts on the Apocalypse" by Benjamin Wills Newton. She writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 13): "When scanning its interesting pages, my attention was arrested by the following: 'The church at Jerusalem, like a sun in the centre of its system, had other churches, like so many planets, revolving around it. It was strictly a mother and a ruling church.' According to his description, the church at Jerusalem seems to prefigure The Mother Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston."
