Mary Baker Eddy grew up in the Congregational church. She writes that it was "where my parents first offered me to Christ in infant baptism."Church History document: L02619, Church History Department of The Mother Church. See also The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 174. She joined the Trinitarian Congregational Church at Sanbornton Bridge (later named Tilton) in New Hampshire in the summer of 1838 when she was a teen, and she remained a member for thirty-seven years.
Congregationalism was one of the most significant denominations to come out of the Puritan experience, especially in terms of United States history. Separatists, or Independents as they were also known, came over on the Mayflower and settled the Plymouth colony, while Puritans, who had hoped to reform the Church of England, settled the Massachusetts Bay colony. The two groups eventually joined together, and out of consolidation was born the Congregational church of New England. The form of worship was unpretentious: hymn singing, readings from the Bible, prayer, and a sermon delivered without ceremony or ritual.
Mrs. Eddy withdrew her membership from the Congregational church just a few months before her textbook on Christian healing, Science and Health, was to be published. A number of years later, in 1884, Mrs. Eddy wrote a minister:
When a child of about 13 yearsSee The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 311. (Note that Mrs. Eddy was actually seventeen.) I united with the Congregationalist church, and never left it until I had one built on its foundations. The only difference being the spiritual element taking the place of the material in its forms and doctrines....In 1892 Mrs. Eddy reorganized her church, which eventually resulted in the removal of the Congregational style of democratic government from The Mother Church. She did, however, retain this form of government in Christian Science branch churches.
We believe only in the baptism of Spirit. Our sacrament is a silent communion with our dear Lord and Christ. We repeat the Lords' prayer audibly and offer man's prayer silently.
The first Tenet of our Church is— "We take the scriptures as our guide to life eternal." "We covenant to faithfully obey the ten commandments to deal justly, love 'mercy and walk humbly with our God'" etc. We are essentially an Evangelical order, the life and teachings of Jesus as contained in the four Gospels are our basis. We believe that healing the sick is essential to Christianity. We have no doubt of the inspiration of the scriptures....Church History document: V00805.
Mary Baker Eddy's insistence that "healing the sick is essential to Christianity" is based on Christ Jesus' command to "heal the sick."Matt: 10:8; Luke 9:2; 10:9. The healing of physical ailments through prayer was not foreign to the Puritan thought either. In John Bunyan's autobiography of his spiritual life, Grace Abounding (1666), he relates two such healings. The first was of his wife during pregnancy: "... before her full time was come, her pangs, as of a woman in travail, were fierce and strong upon her, even as she would have immediately fallen into labor and been delivered of an untimely birth." The effect of his prayer was immediate: "I had no sooner said it in my heart but her pangs were taken from her, and she was cast into a deep sleep and so continued till morning. At this I greatly marvelled...."Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners, 1666 (Springdale, Penn.: Whitaker House, 1993), p. 139. The second healing was of Bunyan himself, when he was "very ill and weak." After he had pondered one of Jesus' parables, a verse from the Bible suddenly came to thought: "At this I became both well in body and mind at once, for my sickness did presently vanish, and I walked comfortably in my work for God again."The parable was Luke 16:19-31. The Bible verse was First Corinthians 15:55. The quotation is from Grace Abounding, pp. 150-151.
John Bunyan is best known for his book The Pilgrim's Progress. This Christian allegory is considered the principal classic of the English Puritan tradition. Like many Christians of her day, Mrs. Eddy was quite familiar with this book. This is evident in that its imagery and concepts appear in her writings.The Pilgrim's Progress resonates in the following references from Science and Health: pp. 21:15-2, 360:4-12, 378:14-16, 380:15-17, 404:15-16, 430-442. When Bunyan's hero declares that "the soul of religion is the practic[al] part,"The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678 (London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 127. he expresses the nature of Christian Science.
Jesus told his disciples, "These signs shall follow them that believe; ... they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover,"Mark 16:17, 18. and "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."John 14:12. Mary Baker Eddy's Puritan upbringing demanded that this "believing" be more than a blind faith in God and His Son. Belief in Christ must be evidenced through a practical understanding of the truths Jesus taught and demonstrated. For Mrs. Eddy, the ability to heal in the manner of Jesus is proof of one's Christianity. As noted in part one of this article, an early Puritan preacher, Richard Sibbes, said, "Religion is not a matter of word ... but ... of Power, it makes a man able." He said that the Puritan's religion is a trade, and "a man hath learned a Trade, not when he can talk of it, but when he can work according to his Trade." This work is "not of great men, nor of mighty men; but of holy men."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. The life of a Christian healer must be permeated with Christliness—an unselfed love of God and man, genuine humility, scrupulous honesty, moral courage, and radical purity of thought. Expressing divine Principle, Truth, and Love in daily life, the healer reflects God, who is the only healing power.
This is how Jesus healed—by reflection. He said, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do," and "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."John 5:19; 14:10. Mrs. Eddy has said: "All I have ever accomplished has been done by getting Mary out of the way, and letting God be reflected. When I would reach this tone, the sick would be healed without a word."John C. Lathrop reminiscences, Church History Department. Also, see We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 118. The only way to "reach this tone" is after the manner of the Puritan—letting God be the prevailing force in every detail of one's life.
It has been written of John Milton, the great Puritan poet of Paradise Lost, that he was able "to express for later generations the most vital thing in the whole Puritan movement, the belief, namely, in the transcending importance of spiritual values and responsibilities and the sanctity of individual spiritual life."Haller, p. 362. This was certainly vital in Mary Baker Eddy's life. For it is only out of expressing one's spiritual values and fulfilling one's spiritual responsibilities that sickness can be healed and sin destroyed. The latter Mrs. Eddy considers to be the most important, as a true Puritan would.
When asked "Is healing the sick the whole of Science?" she replied: "Healing physical sickness is the smallest part of Christian Science. It is only the bugle-call to thought and action, in the higher range of infinite goodness. The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin ...."Rudimental Divine Science, p. 2. Being the smallest part, however, does not mean being unimportant. Far from it. Healing the sick is essential in Christian Science. But one must strive to be a genuine Christian in character in order to heal after the manner of Jesus, relying on God alone. And it is in the striving to be a true Christian, and in the emphasis Mrs. Eddy places on this, that the Puritan influence in her character shines through most clearly. This Puritan, Christian character was absolutely essential to the appearance of God's revelation of Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy was raised as a Puritan by her parents, with the aid of the Bible and the Congregational church. Her life was constructed around the values she learned in childhood, and she never discarded this solidly spiritual foundation. Her adult life gave proof to the proverb "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."Prov. 22:6. She never did.
