Christian Science

1. Mary Baker Eddy born in New Hampshire in 1821.

2. Her parents where members of the Congregationalist Church and where strict Calvinist.

3. She disagreed with predestination, final day of judgment, endless punishment.

4. As a child she suffered from a spinal weakness.

5. She was married for 6 months when her first husband died. 

6. She returned home while pregnant and the trip was very hard on her and she was never pain free from that time on.

7. She married (Patterson) again but divorced her husband due to his unfaithfulness and adultery.

8. In 1862 she heard that a man named Phineas P. Quimby could heal without medicine. 

9. She excepted his teaching that he had rediscovered Jesus healing methods.

10. Quimby called his system as "the Science of the Christ."  Mary Baker will call her system "Christian Science."

11. Mary Baker fell on the ice in 1866.  The injury had been pronounced fatal by the physicians
(she said many years later.)  On the third day of the injury she opened her Bible to Matthew 9:2-8
(the story of the paralytic being healed.)  Here Jesus says, "Arise, take up thy bed, and go to thy house." 
As she read this the healing truth dawned upon her senses.  She got up and got dressed. 
She was in better health after that than ever before. 

12. In 1904 the Dr. Alvin M. Cushing of Springfield, Massachusetts said in an affidavit that: 
"I did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope of Mrs. Patterson's  (Mary Baker) recovery, or
that she was in a critical condition, and did not at any time say, or believe that she had but three or any other limited
number of days to live; and Mrs. Patterson did not suggest, or say, or pretend, or in any way whatever intimate, that
on the third day or any other day, of her said illness, she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or that discovering
or perceiving the truth or the power employed by Christ to heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health."

13. In an existing letter from 13 days later she says to a friend and student of Quimby, “I am slowly failing.” But when
Mary Baker said she was not placing her intelligence in matter, The student replied, “If you believe you are failing, then
your intelligence is placed in matter.”

14. Her healing practice grew and she began to write down her ideas and teach others.

15. In 1870 she was teaching pupils her system of healing and charging $300 for 12 lessons.

16. She wrote her textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health.”

17. IN 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy a sewing machine agent. He became a student and was the first person
to receive the title of “Christian Science Practitioner.”

18. In 1879 the Church of Christ (Scientist) was incorporated.

19. She started the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in her home in 1881.

20. She took a manuscript of Science and Health to a literary advisor named Wiggins who later wrote: “Of all the dissertations a
literary helper ever inspected, I do not believe one ever saw a treatise to surpass this. The misspelling, capitalization and punctuation
were dreadful, but these were not the things that feazed me. It was the thought and the general elemental arrangement of the work.
There were passages that flatly and absolutely contradicted things that had preceded, and scattered all through were incorrect references
to historical and philosophical matters. . . .I was convinced that the only way in which I could undertake the requested revision would be
to begin absolutely at the first page and rewrite the whole thing!”

21. Mary Baker Eddy became engrossed in problems of organization and administration.

22. Her health began to fail again. She attributed her illnesses to the evil influences of her enemies calling them “malicious animal
magnetism.”

23. Her teeth had to be removed and she wore dentures. She began to wear glasses.

24. Due to the pain she became addicted to morphine and had to battle a morphine habit.

25. She did not use her Christian Science mental measures to alleviate the pain because: “If from an injury or from any cause,
a Christina Scientist were seized with pain so violent that he could not treat himself mentally – and the Scientists had failed to
relieve him, - the sufferer could call a surgeon who would give him a hypodermic injection, then, when the belief of pain was
lulled, he could handle his own case mentally.”

26. In 1882 her third husband died of heart disease. Mary Baker Eddy announced to the newspapers that he had been
murdered with arsenic mentally admisitered by “certain parties here in Boston who had sworn to injure” the Eddys.

27. In 1886 Christian Scientists began to go national.

28. 1892 she organized the mother Church in Boston. “The First Church of Christ, Scientist”

29. 1908 she founded the Christian Science Monitor, a daily paper stressing the edifying news instead of the negative.

30. Mrs. Eddy banished Augusta Stetson, the head of the New York church because her popularity was threatening
Mrs. Eddy’s supremacy.

31. Some of Mrs. Eddy’s pupils began to believe that if one became sufficiently spiritual it would be possible to conceive
a child without the help of a man. This occurred in 1890. The newspapers picked up on this and the woman was excommunicated.

32. On December 3, 1910, Mrs. Eddy who had taught that there is no death, died.

33. Shortly before her death Mrs. Eddy said to one of her students: “If I should ever leave here, will you promise me
that you will say that I was mentally murdered?