Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy, the youngest of the six children of Abigail and Mark Baker, was born in Bow, New Hampshire. Although she was raised a Congregationalist, she rejected teachings such as predestination and original sin. She suffered chronic illness and developed a strong interest in the biblical accounts of early Christian healing.

On December 10, 1843, she married George Washington Glover. They moved to the South. He died on June 27, 1844, a little over two months before the birth of their only child, George Washington Glover. Mrs. Glover, assisted by her husband's Masonic Brethren returned North. As a single mother, Mrs. Glover tried writing and working as a preschool teacher to financially provide for her son and herself. However, the social climate of the times made if very difficult for a widowed woman to earn money. She continued to have poor health and George Glover was put into the care of neighbors by her father and step-mother.

After a severe fall in Lynn, Massachusetts allegedly caused a major spinal injury in February 1866, Eddy reported that she turned to the Bible and recovered unexpectedly.She devoted the next three years of her life to Biblical study and what she considered the discovery of Christian Science. In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, Eddy writes

"I then withdrew from society about three years,--to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle, --Deity."

Convinced by her own study of the Bible, especially Genesis 1, and through experimentation, Eddy claimed to have found healing power through a higher sense of God as Spirit and man as God's spiritual "image and likeness." She became convinced that illness could be healed through an awakened thought brought about by a clearer perception of God. She eventually called this spiritual perception the operation of the Christ Truth on human consciousness.

In 1875, after several years of testing the effectiveness of her healing method, Eddy published her discovery in a book entitled "Science and Health" (years later retitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), which she called the textbook of Christian Science. The first publication run was one thousand copies, which she self-published. In it she claimed "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (p. 107). During these years she taught what she considered the science of "primitive Christianity" to hundreds of people. Many of her students became healers themselves. The last 100 pages of Science and Health (chapter entitled "Fruitage") contains testimonies of people who claimed to have been healed by reading her book.

Eddy devoted the rest of her life to the establishment of the church, writing its bylaws, "The Manual of The Mother Church," and revising "Science and Health." While Eddy was a highly controversial religious leader, author, and lecturer, thousands of people flocked to her teachings. She was supported by the approximately 800 students she had taught at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts between the years 1882 and 1889. These students spread across the country practicing healing in accordance with Eddy's teachings. Eddy authorized these students to list themselves as Christian Science Practitioners in the church's periodical, the Christian Science Journal. She also founded the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine with articles about how to heal and testimonies of healing.

In 1908, at the age of 87, Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper which continues to be published today.

At this time no one knows how much, or even if, Eddy influenced the great social and political movements of her day including abolition, the Wellness health movement and the women's suffrage movement. Mark Twain published a satire of Eddy's discovery entitled Christian Science. He said of her in another writing, however,

"When we do not know a person -- and also when we do-- we have to judge the size and nature of his achievements as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no other way. Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred years since the world has produced anyone who could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's waistbelt. In several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived and the most extraordinary."

Source

In 1995 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library has resources available for study.

Read more about her here, here and here.