So just who is Mary Baker Eddy?

Mary Baker Eddy was a life-long Bible student. Her life was hardly easy: a widow and a single Mom, prone to illness so constantly searching – unsuccessfully – for a way out of all her troubles. Not all that unlike many people today.

And at mid-life, she had a severe accident. Her doctor gave up all hope of her survival. So she did what she had always done when in dire straits: she reached for her Bible and began to pray. Again, not all that unlike many of us would do today.

But as she opened her Bible, her eyes fell on a passage in the New Testament. It was an account of a healing that Christ Jesus did. And though it was familiar, she had a sudden insight that all her searching and praying had prepared her for.

Here’s how Mrs. Eddy described it in her autobiography:

“During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.

“My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.

“Even to the homoeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the divine Spirit had wrought the miracle – a miracle which later I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law.”

Mrs. Eddy had discovered the divine Science underlying the teachings of Christ Jesus. And this discovery enabled her to heal with scientific certainty. She wrote down this revelation and published her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which is the textbook of Christian Science.

She healed many forms of so-called “incurable” diseases and opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to teach this system of spiritual healing. Practitioners and teachers of Christian Science are listed in the monthly magazine, The Christian Science Journal, which is published by the Christian Science Publishing Society, which was also founded Mrs. Eddy. (www.spirituality.com.)

She also founded of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, which now has over 1500 branches worldwide. This Church is “designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master [Christ Jesus], which should reinstate primitive Christianity and it’s lost element of healing.” (See the Manual of The Mother Church page 17 – see CHURCH? tab on this website)

She ordained the Bible and the Science and Heath with Key to the Scriptures to be the impersonal pastor of her church and they preach in every Christian Science Church today.

In addition to many other books on scientific Christianity, she wrote an autobiography titled Retrospection and Introspection. There are numerous biographies written about her life by Christian Scientists and non-Christian Scientists alike. All of these books are available to study or purchase at your local Christian Science Reading Room.