¹ Kant, Immanuel, Religion Within the Limits ofReason Alone (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1960) 98Google Scholar.

² Burke, Kenneth, Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968) 376Google Scholar.

³ Eddy, Mary Baker, Manual of the Mother Church (89th ed.; Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1908) 58.Google Scholar Subsequent references to this work, as Manual, will be enclosed in parentheses within the article.

⁴ From a letter dated 19 December 1894, quoted by Peel, Robert in Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977) 72.Google Scholar Even though Peel is a vigorous advocate of Christian Science, his three-volume biography of Eddy is the most thorough and reliable available.

⁵ Eddy, Mary Baker, Miscellaneous Writings: 1883-1896 (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1896) 322Google Scholar.

⁶ Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959) 95–113Google Scholar.

⁷ Kant, Immanuel, “What is Enlightenment?” in idem, On History (ed. Beck, Lewis White, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963) 3–10Google Scholar.

⁸ Kant, , Religion Within the Limits, 102Google Scholar.

⁹ See Twain, Mark, Christian Science (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907).Google Scholar Henry Longfellow's curious testimonial appears in the first issue of The Christian Science Journal (1883) 8.Google Scholar Robert Peel discusses Eddy's relation to Alcott and Emerson in detail in Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture (New York: Holt, 1958) 47–133Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Eddy, Mary Baker, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1971) 113.Google Scholar Subsequent references to this work, as Science and Health, will be enclosed in parentheses within the article.

¹¹ Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 235Google Scholar.

¹² Peel, , Years of Authority, 14.Google ScholarCf. Peel, Robert, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) 283–84.Google Scholar

¹³ Cited by Peel, Robert in Health and Medicine in the Christian Science Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 45Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The story is told with uncharacteristic brevity by Peel, (Years of Discovery, 195–97),Google Scholar who accepts Eddy's subsequent healing as the “immediate fruit” of religious vision.

¹⁵ Silberger, Julius Jr, Mary Baker Eddy: An Interpretive Biography of the Founder of Christian Science (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1980) 92–94.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Eliade emphasizes that sacred time is “reversible and recoverable” through “reactualization” of myth (Sacred and Profane, 68-70). Silberger, (Interpretive Biography, 94–102)Google Scholar interprets the “Fall on the Ice” as becoming a “mythic event” in Eddy's mind when she gave up her dependence on male figures (all of whom-father, teacher, husband—“abandoned” her) and decided to become entirely independent, even while she continued to exchange her healing ability for food and lodging in a succession of boarding houses. While Gottschalk, Stephen (The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973] 31)Google Scholar would be dissatisfied with Silberger's psychoanalytic conclusions, even he acknowledges that “the ‘fall at Lynn,’ in some of its frequent retellings in the literature of the movement, has assumed a somewhat mythic character.”

¹⁷ Eddy, Mary Baker, Unity of Good (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1887) 30.Google Scholar The reference is to 1 Cor 15:45, in which Paul contrasts Adam, the first mortal, with the resurrected Christ as “a quickening spirit.”

¹⁸ Eddy, Mary Baker, Retrospection and Introspection (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1892) 24Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Peel, , Christian Science, 156.Google Scholar The same reservation is expressed in the extensive centennial collection of confirmed testimonies, published under the title, A Century of Christian Healing (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966) 254:Google Scholar “The healing of physical disease is one of the most concrete proofs that can be offered of the substantiality of Spirit. It is not of itself conclusive, and in the nature of things it cannot be offered under the conditions of controlled experiment.”

²⁰ Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968) 315.Google Scholar It must be emphasized that this account does not claim to be an exhaustive explanation of why people become Christian Scientists. Even among Eddy's earliest followers, some were attracted to the movement merely because of her method of healing. One of her first students recalled that her parents had experienced Mrs. Glover's healing powers, when she was a boarder in their home, yet they never attended any of her church meetings “for they were not interested in Christian Science as a religion” (Parker, Mary in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy [Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1972] 23).Google Scholar Such utilitarian interest no doubt attracted many to Christian Science, but a recent study of The Christian Science Journal concludes that “next to healing (the most frequent motive), what both the women and the men had most sought, what they had not found elsewhere, and what they were finding in Eddy's teaching, was a satisfying concept of God.” See McDonald, Jean A., “Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century ‘Public Woman’: A Feminist Reappraisal,” Journal ofFeminist Studies in Religion 2 (1986) 100–111Google Scholar, reprinted in (Talbot, Nathan A., ed.) Christian Science: A Sourcebook of Contemporary Materials (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1990) 272–82Google Scholar.

²¹ Eddy, , Retrospection and Introspection, 70Google Scholar.

²² Knott, Annie M., We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (3d series; Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1953) 85.Google Scholar The same association can be found in an inscription in the Mother Church in Boston. Carved into one of the alcoves around the dome are the words of the angels' announcement of the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:14 and a passage from Science and Health in which proclaims, Eddy, “To-day the healing power of Truth is widely demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science. Its coming, as promised by the Master, is for its establishment as a permanent dispensation” (p. 150)Google Scholar.

²³ Knapp, Bliss in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series; Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1943) 57.Google Scholar This volume is the first in a series of memoirs of Eddy by several of her early students and workers. The entire set of four volumes provides valuable information about Eddy's interpretation of her work and its acceptance by the community she led.

²⁴ Gottschalk, (Emergence of Christian Science, 167)Google Scholar notes that Eddy “never publicly advocated the literal identification of herself with the woman of the Apocalypse.” Nevertheless, the window in the Mother Church may be the picture that speaks louder than words. Christine Trevett, in a sympathetic account of Eddy's contributions to the interests of women (“Woman, God and Mary Baker Eddy,” Religion 14 [1984] 149–50),Google Scholar points out that in defense of “her own insights and person,” she “showed herself conscious of women's significant roles in the early years of the Christian faith,” and turned to the Bible for “identification with certain female figures of both Testaments.”

²⁵ M, M. W., “Letters from the People,” The Christian Science Journal 1 no. 3 (1883) 2Google Scholar.

²⁶ Wilcox, Martha W. in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (4th series) 100Google Scholar.

²⁷ Phinney, Allison W. Jr, in Mary Baker Eddy: A Centennial Appreciation (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966) 91Google Scholar.

²⁸ Royce, , The Problem of Christianity, 317Google Scholar.

²⁹ “Answers to Questions,” The Christian Science Journal 1 no. 6 (1884) 3Google Scholar.

³⁰ Student, A New Year's, “To the Readers,” The Christian Science Journal 1 no. 6 (1884) 4–5Google Scholar.

³¹ M, M. W.., “Letters from the People,” 2Google Scholar.

³² Robertson, Annie Louise in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series) 9Google Scholar.

³³ Eliade, , The Sacred and the Profane, 111.Google Scholar

³⁴ We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series) 31.

³⁵ Eddy recognizes that the claim to the eternality of Christian Science implies that Jesus' teachings recapitulate what has been known in previous ages. “Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God” (Science and Health, 271). Elsewhere she insists that “the Christ is without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea,—the reflection of God,—has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth” (Science and Health, 333). Although her language parallels that of early Deist works, such as Tindal's, MatthewChristianity Old As Creation (1730),Google Scholar Eddy does not reduce christology to moral abstraction. It is essential to her that Jesus literally overcame the limitations of the material world in his healings and resurrection from the dead as a demonstration of the eternal truth of the “Science of Christianity.” Thus, while she interprets her book as the incarnation of Christ, she does not offer it as a substitute for Jesus.

³⁶ Eddy, , Unity of Good, 51, 54Google Scholar.

³⁷ Ibid., 39. Eddy's understanding of her work was recently reaffirmed at an Annual Meeting of the Mother Church in which one member of the Board of Directors commented that “prophetic links go on through the Bible, including that prophecy that there would be a book—and of course, as we know, that book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy is the fulfillment of that prophecy. Out of that book we find that revealed element of Christ-healing” (The Christian Science Journal 104 no. 9 [1986] 510)Google Scholar.

³⁸ We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (3rd series) 61.

³⁹ We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series) 52.

⁴⁰ Gwalter, L. Ivimy in Mary Baker Eddy: A Centennial Appreciation, 110.Google Scholar Eight of the twelve essays in this volume identify Christian Science as the fulfillment of Jesus' promise of a coming “Comforter” (see pp. 2, 11, 21, 39, 43, 76, 101). The casual identification of the Holy Spirit with the second advent of Christ is startling to conventional trinitarian and millennialist doctrine, but it is entirely consistent with Eddy's “realized eschatology.”

⁴¹ Stein, Stephen J. (“Retrospection and Introspection: the Gospel According to Mary Baker Eddy,” HTR 75 [1982] 115),CrossRefGoogle Scholar however, has argued that Eddy constructed the story of her own life in parallel to the Gospel narratives by ordering her autobiography into stages corresponding to the story of Jesus: precocious childhood, calling to divine service, temptation, initiation into a public life of conflict, and the gathering and teaching of a community of disciples. In the introspective portions of her autobiography, Stein detects a “sermon on the mount” in the summary of her leading ideas and a “farewell discourse” in the closing section. While Stein strongly suggests that the parallels reflect Eddy's own sense of identification with Jesus and the Virgin Mary, he acknowledges that they may also be “a coincidental but fascinating by-product of [her] biblical world view.” In either case, he concludes that the publication of the volume in 1891 “contributed to the consolidation of her position as the leader of the Christian Science community at a time when her authority was not fully secure.” The analysis suggests that Eddy subtly claimed the central place in her followers' devotion by casting her life story in a sanctified literary form that identified her with Jesus Christ.

Not surprisingly, the present Manager of the Committees on Publication of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was not persuaded by what he regards as Stein's “elaborate misreading of Mrs. Eddy's text and its all too stereotyped depiction of her character and motives.” The alleged parallels, he counters, are “far-fetched” and “artificial” (Nathan A. Talbot, letter to Dr. Evelyn Irving concerning my inquiry about Stein's article [21 January 1986]). On several points, he is quite right; Stein lists specific verses from the Gospels that seem to bear only the most remote resemblance to sections of Eddy's autobiography. The problem may be that Stein's “structural” analysis rests on such a general pattern of experience that it might well apply to the autobiography of any religious leader.

⁴² Adams, George in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (2d series; Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1950) 34Google Scholar.

⁴³ Mims, Sue in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (2d series) 57.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Peel, , Years of Authority, 59–64Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 308Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Eddy, , Retrospection and Introspection, 70Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Eddy, , Unity of Good, 45.Google Scholar The reference is to Gen 3:15.

⁴⁸ Eddy, Mary Baker, Rudimental Divine Science (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1973) 16.Google Scholar According to the Manual (55-56), any member who persists in teaching contrary to Science and Health will be expunged from the membership rolls.

⁴⁹ See Gottschalk's, informed discussion of “Revelation as Discovery” in Emergence of Christian Science, 27–34.Google Scholar It should be noted, however, that Eddy herself defended the practice of reading texts instead of preaching in worship by asserting, “Whosoever saith there is no sermon without personal preaching, forgets what Christian Scientists do not, namely that God is a Person, and that he should be willing to hear a sermon from his personal God!” (“Message to the Mother Church, 1901,” in Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 11)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series) 43.

⁵¹ Eddy, Mary Baker, The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany (Boston: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1913) 114.Google Scholar

⁵² Her devotion to the exact language is evident in her stipulation that the German translation include the English text (Gottschalk, , Emergence of Christian Science, 36).Google Scholar For discussion of specific terms to which Eddy gave special meaning, see Leishman, Thomas Linton, Why I Am a Christian Scientist (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1958) chap. 16,Google Scholar “The ‘New Tongue’ of Christian Science.”

⁵³ Peel, Robert, “Science and Health and the Bible,” in Frerichs, Ernest S., ed., The Bible and Bibles in America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 206Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 188.Google ScholarPeel, Robert (Christian Science, 125) cites this passage and comments that Eddy considered herself to be carrying Paul's work on “to its logical conclusion.”Google Scholar

⁵⁵ McKee, Clara Knox in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (2d series) 74Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ “Christ and Christmas,” in Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 373Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ McKenzie, Daisette in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (1st series) 41Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 47.

⁵⁹ Eddy, , Miscellaneous Writings, 382Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ John Lathrop records Eddy's own assessment of the divine authority of the Manual: “Every By-law in the manual is inspired. I did not write them any more than I wrote Science and Health [showing that both came to her through revelation]. I study Science and Health constantly” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy [1st series] 22).

⁶¹ Ibid., 15-16.

⁶² Peel, , Years of Authority, 29–34.Google Scholar

⁶³ Recapitulation of mythic archetypes is the standard way in which restorationist movements draw from the primal energies of their corrupted traditions. For example, Shipps, Jan (Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985])Google Scholar has demonstrated that the early Mormons understood themselves as “latter day saints,” retracing the paradigmatic history of Israel. Similarly, Bozeman, T. Dwight (To Lead Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988]) has argued that the Puritans aspired to follow classic and biblical models. Both of these studies also draw from Eliade's theory that religious communities follow “paradigmatic models” in order to participate in enduring realityGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴ Peel, Robert (Christian Science, 128)Google Scholar notes that “there was something of the atmosphere of primitive Christianity among the little group of faithful who surrounded Mrs. Eddy in the eighties.”

⁶⁵ Lindley, Susan Hill (“The Ambiguous Feminism of Mary Baker Eddy,” JR 64 [1984] 329)Google Scholar notes that while Eddy's maternal images of God affirmed the status of women, she diverged sharply from the interests of (contemporary) feminism by creating a hierarchical system, in which “her authority included the institutional as well as the theological aspects of Christian Science.” A similar tension between the authoritarian structure of Eddy's church and the opportunities it provided for women was earlier noted by Mary Farrell Bednarowski in her essay, “Outside the Mainstream: Women's Religion and Women Religious Leaders in Nineteenth-Century America” (JAAR 48 [1980] 221)Google Scholar. McDonald, Jean A. (“Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century ‘Public’ Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal,” 272–82)Google Scholar, however, challenges the conventional thesis that Eddy, like other influential women in the nineteenth century, sought power in the movement she founded to compensate for being excluded from the “mainstream” churches. McDonald points out that Eddy was first and foremost a religious thinker, a person whose ideas about God many found deeply satisfying, and that the significance of her work lies, as it did for her contemporaries, in its constructive theology, not in its institutional form.

⁶⁶ See The Doctrines and Covenants (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1974) 112:19–22Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Eddy, , Rudimental Divine Science, 17Google Scholar.