Mary Baker Eddy Biography Quotes 14 Report mistakes

Early Life and Background
Mary Baker Eddy, born Mary Morse Baker in 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire, grew up in a devout New England household shaped by the Bible and the stern piety of her father, Mark Baker, alongside the gentler, steady faith of her mother, Abigail. Frail in health from childhood and often tutored at home, she developed an intense familiarity with Scripture and an enduring conviction that the healings described in the New Testament were practical and present possibilities. The interplay of religious devotion, personal debility, and the reform currents of nineteenth-century America formed the backdrop against which she would later articulate her theology and method of spiritual healing.

First Marriage, Widowhood, and a Son
In 1843 she married George Washington Glover, a builder, and moved south with him. Within months he died of illness, leaving her a widow in 1844, shortly before or after the birth of their son, George Washington Glover II. Financial hardship and persistent ill health marked the years that followed. Her circumstances complicated her relationship with her son, who was raised for long periods by others, a sorrow that shadowed her early adulthood and shaped her resolve to find reliable relief from suffering.

Search for Healing and Influence of Phineas P. Quimby
By the early 1860s Mary sought help from Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a magnetic healer in Portland, Maine, whose results and ideas about the mind's role in disease impressed her. She experienced improvement under his care and studied his methods, yet she came to hold that the Bible, rather than any human system, must ground true Christian healing. After Quimby's death in 1866, debates arose over the extent of his influence. She acknowledged her gratitude but insisted that what she later taught as Christian Science derived from her own study of Scripture and her experience of divine law, not from Quimby's theories.

1866 Healing and the Birth of Christian Science
In February 1866, after a severe accident on the ice in Lynn, Massachusetts, Mary turned to the Gospels and, while reading an account of Jesus healing the palsied man, experienced a sudden recovery she described as transformative. She interpreted this not as a miracle in the sense of a suspension of law, but as evidence of a spiritual law that Christ revealed and that could be consistently applied. From this event she dated her discovery of Christian Science, and she devoted the next years to Scriptural study, healing, and teaching, testing her insights in practice.

Writing, Teaching, and Organization
Mary began to teach students how to heal through prayer and the understanding of God as divine Mind. Her principal work, first published in 1875 as Science and Health (later Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), underwent many revisions as she clarified language and doctrine. She formed the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 to restore primitive Christian healing; established the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881 to train practitioners and teachers; and drew to her a circle of students and aides who helped carry the work forward. Among them were Calvin A. Frye, her longtime secretary and aide; Edward A. Kimball, a prominent lecturer and teacher; and Augusta E. Stetson, an energetic organizer in New York. Some students, including Emma Curtis Hopkins, later pursued independent paths, contributing to the wider New Thought milieu even as they diverged from her discipline.

Husbands, Household, and Close Associates
Mary married Daniel Patterson, a dentist, in 1853; the marriage deteriorated and ended in divorce in 1873. In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, a devoted supporter of her work and an early Christian Scientist. Their companionship undergirded a period of institutional expansion until his death in 1882. Within her household and offices, Calvin A. Frye provided steady administrative support for decades. Other associates, such as Joseph Armstrong and Archibald McLellan, took responsibilities in publishing and church management, while Alfred Farlow worked publicly to correct misrepresentations of Christian Science in the press. The combination of loyal aides, energetic lecturers, and independent-minded students created both vitality and tension within the movement.

Institutional Consolidation and Public Work
Eddy reorganized the church in 1892 as The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, often called The Mother Church, with a carefully defined governance. She issued the Church Manual, a set of By-Laws designed to preserve doctrinal unity, regulate teaching, and guard against personalism. The Mother Church edifice was dedicated in 1894, symbolizing a nationwide constituency. She founded periodicals, beginning with The Christian Science Journal in 1883, to disseminate teaching and publish verified testimonies of healing, later adding other publications and, in 1908, the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, intended to provide principled journalism. Through these instruments she sought to place her religious system and its ethics in wider public service.

Controversy and Legal Challenges
From the start, Eddy and her followers faced criticism from clergy, physicians, and former students. Critics alleged dependence on Quimby's ideas or challenged her stance on the relation of prayer to medicine. She responded that Christian Science did not deny care and compassion but affirmed the supremacy of spiritual causation and Christly practice. Internal challenges arose as well: some prominent students were disciplined or removed when they resisted church by-laws. In 1907, a well-publicized legal action, the so-called Next Friends suit, questioned her competence and the integrity of her household. After judicial scrutiny, the case collapsed, and she was affirmed as capable, an outcome that strengthened her authority and highlighted the formal safeguards she had put in place for the church's future.

Thought and Method
Eddy's theology centers on God as infinite Spirit, divine Mind, wholly good, and on creation as spiritual, reflecting that goodness. Sin, disease, and death, she taught, derive from mistaken beliefs about God and man, and the redemptive understanding of Christ reveals their unreality in the light of divine law. Healing in Christian Science is not autosuggestion but the prayerful realization of spiritual facts that restore harmony. Scripture, interpreted through its spiritual sense, is the rule and guide; Christ Jesus is the supreme example, whose works are to be followed. Ethical demands are therefore intrinsic: sincerity, purity, charity, and obedience to the Sermon on the Mount. Her insistence on church order, doctrinal clarity, and accountable practice expressed her conviction that Christian healing required a disciplined community as well as inspired insight.

Later Years and Death
In the 1890s Eddy moved to Pleasant View in Concord, New Hampshire, from which she supervised the church through correspondence and trusted officers. In 1908 she relocated to Chestnut Hill, near Boston, where she continued to revise the Church Manual and oversee publishing initiatives. She remained engaged, issuing messages to the movement and occasionally to the public press. Mary Baker Eddy died in 1910, leaving a church with a defined polity, an extensive literature anchored by Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and a global network of churches, practitioners, and readers.

Legacy
Mary Baker Eddy's legacy is that of a religious founder who linked a rigorous spiritual monotheism to practical healing and institutional innovation. The people around her, supportive aides like Calvin Frye, capable organizers such as Edward A. Kimball and Archibald McLellan, forceful students like Augusta Stetson, and early influences including Phineas P. Quimby, helped shape, challenge, and test the movement she launched. Through controversy and consolidation, she kept the Bible at the center of her system and worked to ensure that its healing promises, as she understood them, were not merely believed but demonstrated.

Our collection contains 14 quotes who is written by Mary, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Truth - Faith - Mental Health - Forgiveness.