1898 was an extraordinarily fruitful year for Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Science movement. It was the year in which the Christian Science Board of Lectureship and Board of Education were established, and the Committee on Publication begun; The Christian Science Publishing Society became a reality, and by the fall of 1898 it was publishing a new “weekly newspaper,” now known as the Christian Science Sentinel.
In the midst of all these monumental changes, another shift took place that was just as huge. It was in 1898 that a major change was made to the Christian Science Quarterly. The Bible Lesson-Sermon, the heart of the Quarterly and the heart of the Christian Science Sunday service, began to follow the configuration we know today—using 26 subjects developed by Mary Baker Eddy. This transformation began on July 1, 1898, with “God” as the first lesson in the new format. This was a major change—the biggest to the services since the establishment of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as Pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, three years earlier.
Before July 1898, the subjects for Sunday morning Bible Lesson-Sermons were taken from a periodical titled International Uniform Sunday-School Lessons (often referred to as “the International Series”). These were ecumenical lessons devised by a Protestant Sunday School Union for use in Sunday Schools in the United States, England, and other English-speaking countries. The lessons were short, and generally utilized no more than 10 or 20 Bible verses. They supported a deeper grasp of the chronology of the Old and New Testaments, and steered clear of religious beliefs or theologies. While this made the lessons appropriately nondenominational, the historical focus was not always uplifting. An additional challenge was that the International Lessons were not intended for reading aloud at a church service, yet the Bible Lesson Committee’s responsibility was to select correlative citations from Science and Health for the weekly Lesson-Sermons.
Something different was needed, something both educational and inspirational, both lesson and sermon. The change to a new type of service probably began late in 1897 or early in 1898. William P. McKenzie, Publishing Society Trustee, a member of the Bible Lesson Committee and a former Presbyterian minister, looked at an upcoming issue of the International Series—and did not like what he saw. McKenzie found their quasi historical approach so lacking in inspiration that in a letter to Mary Baker Eddy he called one series of International Lessons the equivalent of being “buried alive” in the Old Testament (IC 13, McKenzie to Eddy, February 13, 1898, The Mary Baker Eddy Library). In early February 1898 he wrote his fiancée, Daisette Stocking: “I have some news to tell you sub rosa. Today we began on the new kind of lessons & had a session from 9 to 5 instead of the usual forenoon. We now leave the beaten path of the International lessons, & Mother [Mary Baker Eddy] begins to teach the world. She assigns to us subjects which we are to elucidate from our text-books—thus answering the questions of mortal mind & taking the world for one large class. Is it not wonderful?” And he noted that “she makes herself impersonally the teacher of the nations thro [through] the Key to the Scriptures. Is not that a good start for ’98?” (McKenzie to Stocking, February 3, 1898, Subject File, McKenzie and Stocking papers, 1897–undated, The Mary Baker Eddy Library).
"Tell the committee these subjects were given of God—they are sufficient and they will remain."
—Mary Baker Eddy
A short while later, in a note to Eddy’s secretary Calvin Frye, McKenzie gave a progress report. The Committee was revising their proposed format, “and shortening the references to make room for the responsive reading. To have this reading as part of the lesson seems desirable for many reasons. It heartens and enlivens the audience to join together in the reading; it makes it necessary for the Scientists to bring their Quarterlies to service, and gives them an opportunity to hand them to visitors, so calling their attention to the new order of service.” And he concluded, “When people are called upon to put up a building the like of which has never been known, a plan is first made, perhaps several; and the best one is chosen” (IC 13, McKenzie to Frye, February 13, 1898).
By April the structure for the new services was established, and the Committee was hard at work, using a list of lessons that Mary Baker Eddy provided. No copies exist of the earliest lists of lesson subjects, but one later list has been preserved (see Frye to Committee on Bible Lessons, L07294 and L07294A, April 26, 1898, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection). What might be most surprising to today’s students of the Lesson-Sermons is that the subjects back then are almost identical to those found in today’s Quarterly; Eddy made very few changes to the subjects after instituting them in 1898. And the lesson format devised by the Bible Lesson Committee did not require much tweaking, either. In May 1898 McKenzie wrote Eddy: “It takes from twenty five to thirty minutes to read the lesson-sermons. By making a careful system of averages and trimming down the lessons they have become uniform in length: & the readers find satisfaction in the effect of the briefer lesson. It is remembered that the compact sermons of our Mother [a reference to Eddy] delivered in years past, seldom were longer than twenty minutes, although they touched the Eternities” (IC 13, McKenzie to Eddy, May 2, 1898).
A few years later, a group of Christian Scientists decided that change was needed again. It was felt that 26 subjects were simply not enough! The idea was first proposed to Mary Baker Eddy in the first half of 1901. This was an especially demanding time for her, as she was preparing for a court case—she was being sued for libel—and did not deal with the proposal until September 1901, several months after the successful conclusion of the lawsuit. Irving Tomlinson, a Bible Lesson Committee member, was meeting with Eddy on an unrelated subject when, as he later recalled, she turned to him and said, so earnestly that Tomlinson almost jumped from his seat, that it would never do—it would never do. “What she meant he did not know, but Mrs. Eddy did not leave him long in ignorance, for she continued in substance, as he recalls: ‘The additional list of topics for the Lessons sent me are not needed. The subjects which you already have include every one of those which you gave to me. These topics proposed can all be used under the present list of subjects. Tell the committee these subjects were given of God—they are sufficient and they will remain’ ” (Irving C. Tomlinson reminiscence, pp. 205-207, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection).
“The questions for our Sermons cannot be exhausted in all eternity,” Eddy remarked on another occasion to Tomlinson (see Tomlinson’s “The Lesson Sermons,” the Christian Science Sentinel, April 3, 1902, p. 492). More than a century later, these lessons remain as a platform for asking questions and receiving answers, educating, inspiring, and healing.
