Resources Published in 1910 and Earlier

This book is Mary Baker Eddy’s response to the vicious accusations by Frederick Peabody, a lawyer who represented a client in litigation against Eddy. Eddy’s advisors recommended she not publish her book because of the possibility of further public agitation. But it was published by the Christian Science Publishing Society for the first time in 2002. 

This flagship for Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy is used as the denominational textbook and was intended by its author to “bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick” (xii). The book’s theological premise—that Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated the spiritual facts of being—precedes the metaphysical interpretation of scripture that grounds its healing system.

Peabody, legal counsel for Josephine Woodbury in a 1901 lawsuit against Mary Baker Eddy, lost the case, but continued accusing Eddy of immorality and abuse in this 1910 book. Peabody also supplied testimony against Eddy for McClure’s magazine, which led to another trial, the ‘Next Friends’ suit (that Eddy also won). Eddy had been counseled against publishing her 1901 response. 

In the early 20th century, when the daily press began to assail Christian Science with its campaign of misrepresentation and slander, Flower, not a Christian Scientist, felt it his duty to present some facts on the other side. The two most persistent arguments that he heard and countered were: a) it is contrary to the Bible and b) organic diseases could not be cured by a religious belief.

Podmore’s 1909 study of mental healing establishes a trajectory from Mesmer’s dismissal of healing in the churches, through the materialism in animal magnetism, through the psychical side of Spiritualism, toward clairvoyant diagnoses of Quimby, and finally returning to the church in the arrival of Mary Baker Eddy’s religion. The book consists of a historical context for the mind-body experimentation.

This 1993 biography of Mary Baker Eddy is a reprint of the hostile original public domain book, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, by Georgine Milmine. Until this reprint appeared, authorship of the book had been attributed solely to Milmine; however, Cather’s involvement in the series was greater than she chose to admit.

This extremely important report covers the court trial, the ‘Next Friends’ suit against Mary Baker Eddy, which was dismissed. It includes records of pre-trial publicity, court proceedings, and press interviews, and is an important study for the American history of religion, the struggle between religion and science, medical and psychiatric history, legal precedence, and the powerful, long-lasting impact of yellow journalism. 

Mark Twain’s book on Christian Science is drawn primarily from articles he had written over the years for Cosmopolitan and other periodicals. He fully engaged his vivid imagination in creating this text, fueled by evidence (some true, some false) offered to him from hostile sources such as Frederick Peabody, who made a career out of defaming Eddy.

Wilbur began writing about Mary Baker Eddy in Human Life Magazine in December 1906, countering articles published about Christian Science and Eddy in the New York World newspaper. In response to Georgine Milmine’s series in McClure’s Magazine a few months later, Wilbur wrote her own series. This work has been criticized for its overly sympathetic tone and recurrent lack of documentation.

The contemporary importance of this brief article written in 1889 by Hannah Larminie lies in its theological explanations of Christian Science. It provides some answers to the oft-repeated question about what the correct understanding of Christian Science doctrine is vis-a-vis the mainstream adoption of the Apostles’ Creed. A brief theological interpretation follows each line of the Creed.

Gestefeld had been an adoring student of Mary Baker Eddy’s until she felt ready to extend her own ideas beyond her teacher. She thought of herself as evidence of the natural progression of what Christian Science should be. But she opposed Eddy’s strict boundaries, and the trajectory of Gestefeld’s writing moved toward eclectic views, contrary to Eddy’s particularism.

James Henry Wiggins writes a response to a California clergyman’s critique of Christian Science who denigrated the members’ healing works. Wiggins explains Christian Science as a science, the knowledge of which is a universal spiritual law in consonance with the teachings and healings of Jesus. Wiggins takes on the argument of the clergyman point-by-point, explaining the theology and biblical basis of the faith.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote of her first edition of Science and Health (when she was Mary Baker Glover) that it was her most important work and contained the complete statement of Christian Science,—the term she employed to express the divine, or spiritual, Science of Mind-healing. Her final version reflects a shift from a narrative to an explicitly religious discovery.

This book is Walter’s autobiographical account of the first five years after his dramatic healing through Christian Science treatment and his subsequent successful healing practice based on his reading of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Walter left the church soon afterward due to his conviction that this healing method should be treated more like a Science than a religious practice.