Mary Baker Eddy Taught Spiritual Healing
The Founder of Christian Science Carried Metaphysical Message
Jun 15, 2009
In John 14:16, Jesus promised his followers “another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth…” Christian Scientists around the world believe that Mary Baker Eddy brought this Comforter when she discovered the principles of Divine Science and founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts, better known as the Christian Science church.
How Mary Baker Eddy Explained the Book of Revelation
In her ground-breaking Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy wrote a chapter entitled “The Apocalypse” which interprets the Revelation or vision of St. John. She says it “has a special suggestiveness in connection with the nineteenth century. In the opening of the sixth seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, the distinctive feature has reference to the present age.” (page 560).
The “mighty angel” who came down from Heaven clothed with a cloud and carrying a little book, was a messenger who prefigured her own Divine Science. She saw the little book as containing the same principles she had discovered, and herself as the Leader of a new age. Eddy saw her spiritual science as the fourth side of the city of New Jerusalem. The other three sides she saw as The Word, Christ, and Christianity.
Adding the Concepts of Science to Christian Beliefs
The divine laws of Life, Truth and Love were revealed to Eddy over a period of many years. Her “final revelation” was of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing. She became an alternative healer, teaching others to also become spiritual healers, and spread the message that “thoughts are things.”
Through Christian Science, she said, religion and medicine are both inspired with a diviner nature. On page 109 of Science and Health she says of her discovery that “erring, mortal, misnamed mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body … and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that mind is all and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind-Science.”
Christian Science Opened the Door to the New Thought Movement
The principles of Christian Science, as taught by Eddy, are summed up in the Scientific Statement of Being as follows: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is all-in-all. Spirit is immortal truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”
These concepts evolved into what is known today as the New Thought movement. Millions of people today believe in these principles, and participate in various organized religions based on them. Religion and spirituality are now often thought of and taught as separate and distinct from each other, and Mary Baker Eddy’s metaphysical messages are alive and well.
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