One of the very first things that I learned about the life of Mary Baker Eddy as a young boy, is that she discovered Christian Science after she fell on the ice in 1866. But if I had been a little boy during the early years of Christian Science, is that what I would have heard?

Mary Baker Eddy once wrote, “Find me in my writings, those who look for me elsewhere lose me instead of find me.” I would like to do just that, and look at what her own words tell us about the discovery of Christian Science.

Mary Baker Eddy published the first edition of Science and Health in 1875. In it she writes about her discovery of Christian Science.

“We made our first discovery that science mentally applied would heal the sick, in 1864, and since then have tested it on ourselves and hundreds of others, and never found it fail to prove the statement herein made of it.” (Science and Health 1st Edition page 4)

In the first edition of Science and Health she says she discovered it in 1864 and she says nothing about the year 1866. She does make a reference to an accident happening to her, though she remains fairly vague about it. But she doesn’t connect her discovery of Christian Science to her fall on the ice in any way.

So if you were living in Lynn, Massachusetts in, say 1876, and you bought a copy of the First Edition of Science and Health in a bookstore, you would say that Christian Science was first discovered in 1864, according to the author of Science and Health. Well, a Christian Scientist today might say, there was just a typo in that first edition, and it was supposed to say 1866. But the third edition of Science and Health doesn’t let us say that.

Perhaps you were living in Boston in 1881 and bought the Third Edition of Science and Health in a bookstore. In the Third Edition of Science and Health she says:

“We made our first discovery of the adaptation of metaphysics to the treatment of disease about the year 1864; since then we have tested the Principle on ourselves and others, and never found it fail to prove the statement herein made of it.” (Science and Health 3rd Edition Volume 1, page 6, preface)

Again, in the Third Edition she cites the year of her discovery as 1864. She rewrote the sentence and still affirmed that her discovery of Christian Science was in 1864. She never mentions the year 1866 in her Third Edition of Science and Health. She does write at some length about the fall on the ice in this edition – but she doesn’t connect it in any way to her discovery of Christian Science.

Commenting on the First Edition of Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy biographer Robert Peel (whose trilogy of biographies are found in most Christian Science Reading Rooms today) says, “she gave 1864 as the year of her discovery and continued to do so for several years afterward until she had sorted out her ideas more thoroughly.” (Peel vol 1, 343 n 112)

He also writes, regarding 1864:

“In the first three editions of S&H and in other early documents Mrs. Eddy gave that year as the date of her first glimpse of what she later called Christian Science, and her healing of Mrs. Mary Ann Jarvis in 1864 is cited in S&H today (p. 184 f.) as an example of metaphysical treatment. Only through a gradual process did she come to the recognition of her healing of February, 1866, as the great watershed in her spiritual development, though it is evident that elements of Christian Science were in her thought before that date and elements of Quimby’s thought continued to influence her for several years afterward.” (Peel vol 2, p. 342 n 16)

If Peel’s thesis is true, then for over 15 years (from 1866 to at least 1881) she didn’t realize what a watershed moment 1866 had been. That thesis isn’t consistent with how Mrs. Eddy later wrote about 1866.

In Miscellaneous Writings, Mrs. Eddy writes of her 1866 experience:

“This knowledge came to me in an hour of great need; and I give it to you as death-bed testimony to the daystar that dawned on the night of material sense. This knowledge is practical, for it wrought my immediate recovery from an injury caused by an accident, and pronounced fatal by the physicians. On the third day thereafter, I called for my Bible, and opened it at Matthew ix. 2. As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed.”

Mis. 24:4-14

She speaks of the immediacy and completeness of her healing. She also speaks of this as the appearing of the day-star.

In an Easter Sermon (presumably April 21st, which was Easter in 1889) she said:

In 1866, when God revealed to me this risen Christ, this Life that knows no death, that saith, “Because he lives, I live,” I awoke from the dream of Spirit in the flesh so far as to take the side of Spirit, and strive to cease my warfare. When, through this consciousness, I was delivered from the dark shadow and portal of death, my friends were frightened at beholding me restored to health. A dear old lady asked me, “How is it that you are restored to us? Has Christ come again on earth?” “Christ never left,” I replied; “Christ is Truth, and Truth is always here, — the impersonal Saviour.” Then another person, more material, met me, and I said, in the words of my Master, “Touch me not.” I shuddered at her material approach; then my heart went out to God, and I found the open door from this sepulchre of matter.”

Mis. 179:31-15

Mrs. Eddy apparently told one of her students, “that when she made her discovery of Christian Science for three days she was in heaven, lifted up out of all sense of materiality, and that no one would ever be able to appreciate what it meant to come down from that exalted state to share her vision with the world.” (John Salchow Reminiscences, p. 44)

Why didn’t she speak this way of her experience for over 15 years after 1866? If she was in heaven during the three days after her fall on the ice – which she parallels with Jesus’ three days in the tomb – why, for over 15 years, did she persist on dating her discovery of Christian Science to 1864? If Mrs. Eddy had that experience and was in heaven in 1866, then why did she still persist, for over 15 years, to refer to 1864 as the date of her discovering Christian Science? If 1866 was so profound for her, then why didn’t she identify it as the point of the discovery of Christian Science for over 15 years?

I am not for an instant suggesting that the fall on the ice didn’t happen. It most certainly did. The following appeared in the newspaper.

“Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, of Swampscott, fell upon the ice near the corner of Market and Oxford streets, on Thursday evening, and was severely injured. She was taken up in an insensible condition and carried to the residence of S.M. Bubier, Esq., near by, where she was kindly cared for during the night. Dr. Cushing, who was called, found her injuries to be internal, and of a very serious nature, inducing spasms and intense suffering. She was removed to her home in Swampscott yesterday afternoon, though in a very critical condition.” (In My True Light and Life, p. 137)

She also wrote to a friend who had learned Phineas Quimby’s healing method, Mr. Julius Dresser, two weeks after the fall on the ice. (Included in her letter is a poem she wrote eulogizing Quimby and which was published in the newspaper on February 14th). But here is her letter to Julius Dresser.

Lynn February 15, 1866

Mr. Dresser,

Sir: I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved friend [Phineas Quimby], which perhaps you will not think over-wrought in meaning: others must of course.

I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice, and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapours from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.

The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should but in two days I got out of my bed alone, and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly. … Now can’t you help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think I could help another in my condition if they have not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly fading.

Won’t you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?…

Respectfully

Mary M Patterson

(Gill 158)

This letter, describing her pains and asking for help, written two weeks after her fall on the ice, would seem to contradict her later statement that she had a full and instant healing. Biographer Gillian Gill, whose book was sold in Christian Science Reading Rooms for a number of years, says, “In her letter to Dresser Mrs. Patterson gave little indication that the fall and recovery she had just experienced constituted an enlightenment that, little by little, would fundamentally change her life and her worldview.” (Gill p. 163)

We have further evidence that the fall on the ice did happen, because, “In a petition which she presented in late summer of 1866 to the city of Lynn Mrs. Patterson alleges that the city was responsible for the dangerous state of the streets, and seeks damages for ‘serious personal injuries from which she had little prospect of recovering.’” (Gill p. 163)

So the fall on the ice most certainly did happen, she was complaining about injuries from that fall for months afterwards. But in the first 15 years after that fall on the ice, she didn’t identify it as the moment of her discovery of Christian Science. So, at what point did she begin to identify 1866 as the year of the discovery of Christian Science?

On August 17, 1881 Mrs. Eddy published the 3rd Edition of Science and Health, in which she identified 1864 as the date of her discovery.

However, just a few years later, she changes the dates.The next edition of Science and Health that I currently have is the 26th Edition, published in 1887.

In it, she says,

“Mr. Quimby died in 1865, and my first knowledge of Christian Science, or Metaphysical Healing, was gained in 1866. He was an uneducated man; but he was a distinguished mesmerist, and personally manipulated his patients. This I know, having been one of them.” (S&H 26th Edition, p 6 – 1887)

“In the year 1866 I discovered metaphysical healing, and named it Christian Science.” (S&H 26th Edition, p. 11 – 1887)

In 1884, The Christian Science Journal began referring to Mrs. Eddy’s discovery as taking place in 1866. So, somewhere between 1881 when she definitively said that she discovered Christian Science in 1864 and 1884 when she gives the date as 1866. What changed?

Let’s look at the timeline.

On August 17, 1881, she published the 3rd Edition of Science and Health, which still said she discovered CS in 1864.

Two months later, on October 26th, many of Mrs. Eddy’s longest running students charged Mrs. Eddy with “frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money, and the appearance of hypocrisy” and withdrew from the Association (Gill 282).

On February 8, 1883, Julius Dresser – the same person she had written to seeking healing several weeks after her fall on the ice – returned to Massachusetts after several years away, and began giving lectures and writing articles alleging that Mrs. Eddy got many of her ideas from the teachings of Phineas Quimby.

On September 21, 1883, Mrs. Eddy published the 6th Edition of Science and Health. This is one of the major revisions of Science and Health. Thereafter, 1866 became the date of the discovery of Christian Science.

Up until the time that the Quimby allegations came out, Mrs. Eddy identified her discovery as occurring in 1864. Quimby was still alive in 1864, and someone could make the assertion that he influenced her in her ideas. After Julius Dresser’s allegations said that Mrs. Eddy got her ideas from Quimby, she changed the date of the discovery to 1866, after Quimby’s death. And she said that she had a revelation from God in 1866 at the time of her fall on the ice. Since most of her long-time students left in 1881, the new students were not as accustomed to the previous teaching that she discovered CS in 1864. Her new students knew the account of the discovery that she now told, that Christian Science came as a divine revelation in 1866.

Someone might say that in those early editions of Science and Health she was only referring to her first discovery of Christian Science as taking place in 1864, when the full discovery happened in 1866. However, Mrs. Eddy would later change what she wrote, saying that her first discovery of Christian Science did not happen until 1866.

“It is authentically said that one expositor of Daniel’s dates fixed the year 1866 or 1867 for the return of Christ — the return of the spiritual idea to the material earth or antipode of heaven. It is a marked coincidence that those dates were the first two years of my discovery of Christian Science.”

(My. 181:27)

This quote is worth a whole post on its own.

Biographer Gillian Gill, whose book is still found in many Reading Rooms, says,

“There can be no doubt that Mary Baker Eddy revised her account of what happened after she fell on the sidewalk in Lynn in the winter of 1866, and that this revision moved consistently in the direction of presenting the incident as a moment of revelation. … Rather than seeking to exculpate or absolve Mrs. Eddy here, it seems to me important not only to acknowledge her tendency to engage in creative manipulations of the past but also to evaluate how far this practice served her as a religious leader.”

Tendency to engage in creative manipulations of the past is quite the euphemism.

After the claim began to circulate that Mrs. Eddy had gotten some of her ideas from Phineas Quimby, she changed her account of her discovery of Christian Science. Instead of dating it to 1864, as she did for nearly 20 years, she dated it to 1866. She began to elaborate on her account of falling on the ice. She clearly did fall on the ice, and sought healing from one of Quimby’s students two weeks after the fall, she even brought a complaint against the city, seeking damages for ‘serious personal injuries from which she had little prospect of recovering.’ Over time, starting in the mid 1880s, Mrs. Eddy engaged in a creative manipulation of the past, and said she was instantly and completely healed, and she consistently spoke of this fall on the ice as the dramatic moment of her grand revelation from God. It began to grow larger in the retelling, until she spoke of being in heaven for those three days, and she compared it to Jesus’ three days in the tomb.

Do you know anyone who tells fish stories? They tell stories about the big fish that they almost caught, the fish that got away. The funny thing is that each time they tell the story the details change a little bit, and the fish manages to get bigger each time. I’ve known a few people like that through the years. They are folks that have the tendency to engage in creative manipulations of the past. They may be funny, charming, and great storytellers, with interesting things to say. But I wouldn’t trust a person like that with my life. Would you?

It is a typical hallmark of cultish groups that their stories change over time. Whether it was Joseph Smith changing the stories of his “first vision” or the Jehovah’s Witnesses changing their predictions of the end of the world. Or Mary Baker Eddy changing the story of the origin of Christian Science.

On the other hand, the manuscript evidence of the Bible is incredibly solid. Mark’s gospel, or Paul’s letter to the Philippians, for instance, didn’t change over time. They didn’t modify their stories. The manuscript evidence and external evidence point to an unchanging testimony of the early church as to the life and works and teaching of Jesus, and to their faith in him as the only way to salvation through his crucifixion and resurrection. This testimony is unchanging and true and leads to eternal life.