The time is Monday morning, March 16, 1885. A new religions teaching, expounding radical theological concepts and headed by a dynamic woman, is coming to the forefront of public thought. Some of the conservative clergy, uneasy over increasingly numerous reports of remarkable healings and rising acceptance of this teaching, are becoming sharply critical.
The place is Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts. The well-known Reverend Joseph Cook, having denounced this new phenomenon in a public letter, has begrudgingly allowed its chief proponent ten minutes for rebuttal at one of his popular Monday morning lectures.
The proponent is Mary Baker Eddy. After spending the greater part of her life in search of a more satisfactory understanding of God and Christianity, a hard fall on the ice and the resultant severe injury became for her a Peniel in her search for divine Truth. After a physician pronounced the injury to be of the utmost severity, she experienced great spiritual illumination while studying Biblical accounts of Christ Jesus' healings, which brought the discernment of an underlying spiritual law and immediate physical restoration. Mrs. Eddy has since devoted her remarkable energies toward the forwarding of this tremendous discovery, which she named "Christian Science."
