The Mary Baker Eddy Library uses its collections to educate visitors about Mary Baker Eddy's life and ideas. Often these historical documents and artifacts can help us better understand her published writings. The Library's current main exhibit, Private Carriage, Public Journey, features Mary Baker Eddy's actual custom–built brougham carriage to tell the story of how her daily carriage rides went from private excursions to public events. Understanding the carriage also helps explain two important pieces from Mary Baker Eddy's published works—Article VIII, Section 27, "The Golden Rule," in the Church Manual and her article "Personal Contagion."
By 1895, when Mary Baker Eddy bought the carriage on display, her rides were no longer only private experiences that provided her with recreation, rare moments of solitude, and opportunities for prayer. Her success as a best–selling author, church founder, publisher, and healer had come at the cost of intense media scrutiny, and this attention would build until the carriage rides themselves became major news.
Mrs. Eddy's drives attracted the attention of newspaper reporters, her followers, and interested members of the public. Since she wanted to protect this midday hour of peace, Mary Baker Eddy added a By–Law to the Manual of The Mother Church in 1904. It read in part: "Thou shalt not Steal. Sect. 15. Neither a Christian Scientist, his student, or his patient, nor a member of the Mother Church—shall daily and continuously haunt Mrs. Eddy's drive by meeting her once or more every day when she goes out ... Mrs. Eddy objects to said intrusion inasmuch as she desires one hour for herself." Later Mary Baker Eddy revised this By–Law to how it appears today in the Church Manual as Article VIII, Section 27, "The Golden Rule."
