Since I've become a researcher at The Mary Baker Eddy Library, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, has taken on another dimension. With the daily opportunity to read and consider Mrs. Eddy's correspondence files, I've discovered that she writes about her major work, Science and Health, in beautiful and deeply moving ways. Three major themes have stood out during my research.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote, and revised, Science and Health over nearly four decades—almost half of her life. She first started writing the book in 1872 amid various troubles, personal and public. That year a former student attacked her Science in a local newspaper. In 1873 she divorced her husband of 20 years on the grounds of desertion, though infidelity was also an issue. Finances were a huge challenge; she was frequently forced to move, living in eight different locations in 1874 alone. Samuel Putnam Bancroft, one of her earliest students, remembered: "... in 1874 Mrs. Eddy was homeless, living among strangers. ..."All items cited in this article are found in The Mary Baker Eddy Collection in The Mary Baker Eddy Library. Mrs. Eddy as I Knew Her in 1870 (Boston: Geo. H Ellis, 1923), p. 21 .
The publication of Science and Health in 1875 brought praise as well as fierce criticism. In 1884 she wrote of the bitter experiences involved in writing the book: "That work is the outgrowth of my whole life. ... It was learned of God, never from an author, or a person. It was learned through earthly sorrow, and sickness and such as never mortal had before; a life-long experience that still goes on, ingratitude, betrayals, falsehood, envy, lust and hate arrayed against me." V00838, Mary Baker Eddy to Mrs. Swarts, September 30, 1884 .
