"From Puritan parents, the discoverer of Christian Science early received her religious education." Science and Health, p. 359 This statement in Mary Baker JL Eddy's primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, might be thought of as one of the foundation stones in building an accurate understanding of history's only feminine founder of a formal religious denomination that claims adherents worldwide, The Puritan influence in her early religious training explains much about how she thought and lived, how she sought, approached, and understood God. This Puritan approach to God was a motivating force behind her private and public conduct throughout her life.
To truly explore Mrs. Eddy's Puritan background, stereotypes of the believers as rigid extremists must be left behind. In fact, for the Puritan, fulfilling one's duty to God was the whole purpose of man's existence. Nothing was more important. Every detail in one's life could only be dealt with correctly from an understanding of the divine will, an understanding that was not intellectually arrived at, but one that was received directly from God Himself. The Puritan sought to hear God's commands consciously, moment by moment. His religion was not a cerebral exercise; it had to be a tangibly felt and practical experience.
Richard Sibbes, a notable Puritan preacher active in the first half of seventeenth century England, counseled: "Religion is not a matter of word, nor stands upon words, as wood consists of Trees . . . but ... of Power, it makes a man able. [It] is an Art, not of great men, nor of mighty men; but of holy men: it is an Art, and Trade: a Trade is not learned by words, but by experience: and a man hath learned a Trade, not when he can talk of it, but when he can work according to his Trade." Richard Sibbes, Saints Cordialls, 1637, pp. 383-384, quoted in William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938; 1972 reprint), p. 161 It would be hard to find a better description than this of Mary Baker Eddy's expectation for ...
