Christian Science and the Bible: with reference to Mary Baker G. Eddy’s ‘Science and Health’

Pleigh, Phare (a.k.a. Wiggins, James Henry). Christian Science and the Bible: with reference to Mary Baker G. Eddy’s ‘Science and Health.’ Boston: S.H. Crosse, 1886.

Phare Pleigh is the pseudonym for James Henry Wiggin, a Unitarian minister who left the ministry for a career in writing and editing. In the 1880s Wiggin served as editor and proofreader for Mary Baker Eddy’s revisions of her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as well as for The Christian Science Journal. During this decade, under his pseudonym, he wrote several responses to attacks on Christian Science, one of these being this 82-page pamphlet which is a specific response to a California clergyman. Wiggins begins with a survey of the miracles found in the Bible: “Miracles, miracles everywhere!” (9). He asks Christians of his own day why they don’t believe in miracles when Jesus promised even greater works than his own (John 14:12). Next, he introduces Christian Science theology as a science, or “knowledge of the universal spiritual law, in consonance with the teachings and example of the Master” (16).  Wiggins then takes on the antagonism of the California clergyman point-by-point, quoting extensively from Science and Health. Some of the topics covered are: “Soul and Body,” “Incarnation,” “the Resurrection of Jesus,” “The Five Senses,” “Union of Science and Reason,” “Substance,” “Spiritualism,” and “Genesis and Creation.”

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