. . . the highest position attainable . . .

by Mike Davis

If you’re familiar with Christian Science, you know that spiritual healing is one of its central focuses and that Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, is a textbook about healing. You may also have heard that Mrs. Eddy herself became an outstanding healer and taught others to heal.

Have you ever wondered about those students she taught? Did they ever run into challenges when practicing Christian Science healing that made them feel they needed some good advice and counsel? Did they ever need encouragement? The answer is yes!

How did Mrs. Eddy respond to this need of her students and other Christian Scientists? Well, one thing she did was write letters to them.

Mrs. Eddy’s letters of advice show that she cared deeply about her students, and did not feel that the end of a class marked the end of her contacts with them. As she wrote in Science and Health in a chapter specifically about teaching Christian Science healing (page 454): “Do not dismiss students at the close of a class term, feeling that you have no more to do for them. Let your loving care and counsel support all their feeble footsteps, until your students tread firmly in the straight and narrow way.”

The collection of documents in The Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston contains hundreds of letters showing Mrs. Eddy’s “loving care and counsel.” These letters cover many different aspects of the subject of Christian healing. For example, she instructs students to be direct and fearless in confronting the mental “errors” at the root of a disease; she gives helpful advice on dealing with ignorant or malicious opposition to prayer as a healing power. She shows compassion toward those struggling with personal problems. She is sometimes stern in demanding a change of thought on the part of the healer in order to bring about better healing results in the patient. And she frequently emphasizes the Bible-both its teachings and its record of Jesus as a healer.

One theme that is emphasized in Mrs. Eddy’s letters to students is that they pay close attention to their own spiritual growth. She frequently urged upon them foundational Christian qualities such as unselfishness, love, honesty, and purity. She held that commitment to these “things of the spirit” in place of the love of the “flesh” (i.e. material things and values) was essential. She believed that through spiritual progress, students could begin to achieve the same kind of quick and permanent healings that are found in the Biblical record.

In 1897 she wrote to James Neal, a young man who had studied with her and who was practicing Christian Science healing: “I had felt for some time the fitness you possessed for healing. . . . To this glorious end I ask you to still press on, and have no other ambition or aim. A real scientific Healer is the highest position attainable in this sphere of being. . . . Darling James, leave behind all else and strive for this great achievement. . . . Your aid to reach this goal is spiritualization. To achieve this you must have one God, one affection, one way, one Mind. Society, flattery, popularity are temptations in your pursuit of growth spiritual. Avoid them as much as in you lies. Pray daily, never miss praying, no matter how often: ‘Lead me not into temptation,’ - scientifically rendered, - Leave me not to lose sight of strict purity, clean pure thoughts; let all my thoughts and aims be high, unselfish, charitable, meek, - spiritually minded. With this altitude of thought your mind is losing materiality and gaining spirituality, and this is the state of mind that heals the sick.” [L03524, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection.]

With the exception of one last class in 1898, Mrs. Eddy had stopped formal classroom teaching in 1889. But she continued to write letters of advice to Christian Science healers through the year 1910, when she died at the age of 89. During the last decade of Mrs. Eddy’s life, membership in the Church of Christ, Scientist rapidly increased and many new branch churches formed around the world. We might easily think that Mrs. Eddy would have been so gratified by the numerical growth of her movement that she might have felt that its ultimate success was assured. But Mrs. Eddy’s letters during this period continued to urgently stress the supreme importance of outstanding healing through prayer in Christian Science. She emphasized that without quick and effective healing, Christian Science would become a mere theory, and Christian Science churches would have no reason for existing.

One example of this is a letter she wrote in 1907 to Francis Fluno, a former medical doctor who was by that time a Christian Science practitioner and teacher:

Now I name a need that is above all others to ensure the perpetuity of the present success of Christian Science and its continued advancement, namely: A higher and more practical healing. A definite immediate cure is the demonstration of what you promulgate in theory, and theory as to religion or philosophy without practice is worse than nothing for it disappoints the seeker of it and destroys the evidence of its truth, making the situation more hopeless, than even ignorance. [L08548, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection.]

The excellent healing records of many of Mrs. Eddy’s students indicate that they were indeed helped by her advice. And her admonitions to Christian Scientists to continually strive for “a higher and more practical healing” remain to encourage us today.

Mrs. Eddy’s letters of advice to healers can be read in the Research Room of The Mary Baker Eddy Library. The staff has also put together some compilations of these letters that can be purchased. For more information, call 617-450-7218, or email research@marybakereddylibrary.org.

Mike Davis works in The Mary Baker Eddy Library as a researcher.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Mary Baker Eddy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.