Among the childhood memories that made a deep impression on Mary Baker Eddy were visits paid to her family home in New Hampshire by some of the leading Protestant ministers of New England. Many years later she would say of them that they were men of kindness and rectitude, “. . . Christians of the old sort . . . . Full of charity and good works . . . . God seemed to shield the whole world in their hearts, and they were willing to renounce all for Him” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 32).
Of these ministers, whom she credits for helping prepare her thought for the eventual reception of the Science of Christianity, she made this arresting observation: that their very lives were sermons preached—that their lives provided such eloquent examples of piety, holiness, and courage as to be models for everyone to emulate.
Through the ages, significant figures—ranging from Moses and Elijah to John the Apostle and Paul—have, by their lives, inspired others to higher spiritual attainments. Unmovable in their adherence to right, they were always about their Father’s business, always obedient to God’s commands, willing to sacrifice all for good. And these very qualities can make sermons of our own lives, hinting at the manner in which divinity reaches and transforms humanity and illustrating what the poet John Dryden once wrote of a fictional parson:
