
The First
Church of Christ,
Scientist, in Boston,
Massachusetts
The
Young-Wilcox
Connection
Conceding
that Mrs. Wilcox, in writing her
memoirs, may have been influenced
by the teaching she received from
Bicknell Young, Dr. Charles S.
Braden states: "Glimpses of the
emerging monism [linking
Spirit and matter] can be
caught in a paper written by
Martha Wilcox of Kansas City, in
which she speaks of what she
gathered while a member of Mrs.
Eddy's household. Recollection is
of course a selective process,
and, as Mrs. Wilcox attended
Young's 1910 Normal class, the
possibility cannot be entirely
discounted that she was
influenced by this experience in
later recording the highlights of
the Eddy sojourn."
Christian
Science Today
(1958) p. 332
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Two Schools of Teaching in
the CS Movement
Appendix
C
Citations for
Study
". . . The
human mind and body are myths." (Science and
Health, p. 150)
"Mortal mind
perpetuates its own thought. It constructs a
machine, manages it, and then calls it material. A
mill at work or the action of a water-wheel is but
a derivative from, and continuation of, the
primitive mortal mind." (Science and Health,
p. 399)
"Nothing appears to
the physical senses but their own subjective state
of thought. The senses join issue with error, and
pity what has no right either to be pitied or to
exist, and what does not exist in Science."
(Miscellaneous Writings, p. 105)
"The objects
cognized by the physical senses have not the
reality of substance. They are only what mortal
belief calls them." (Science and Health, p.
311)
"The objects of
time and sense disappear in the illumination of
spiritual understanding, . . ." (Science and
Health, p. 584)
"Divine Science,
rising above physical theories, excludes matter,
resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the
objects of material sense with spiritual ideas."
(Science and Health, p. 123)
"Metaphysics
resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the
objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas
are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual
consciousness, and they have this advantage over
the objects and thoughts of material sense,
they are good and eternal." (Science and
Health, p. 269)
Arthur
Corey writes:
Possibly
the most important of all
modern documents to escape the
long arm of ecclesiastical
vandalism is an unpublished
letter from Edward Kimball to
Judge Septimus Hanna, written
at Kansas City in the winter
of 1907, for it settles at
last the moot question of what
this most distinguished of
Mary Baker Eddy's students did
teach privately under her
direct supervision.
Hidden
away for three decades in the
Judge's musty files, this
priceless piece was
surrendered to the Kimball
family in 1937 by the Hanna
secretary and heir, . .
.
On
the diplomatic plea that his
teaching was widely
misunderstood and
misrepresented, Mr. Kimball
undertakes to outline for
Judge Hanna, his successor on
the Christian Science Board of
Education [Note: Mr.
Eugene H. Greene had already
taught the 1906 Normal
class], the instruction of
a class. . . .
Throughout
the history of the Church,
there have been two divergent
trends of thought. There have
been those who pursue the
negative course
"there
is no this, that or the
other thing"; then there are
those of the positive approach
"there
is a truth to
everything." . . . [Note:
this variant teaching attempts
to establish a link between
Truth and error, Spirit and
matter.]
Arthur
Corey
Christian
Science Class Instruction,
pp. 90;
145-146
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"Matter is manifest
mortal mind, and it exists only to material sense."
(Miscellaneous Writings, p. 72)
"Matter is an error
of statement. This error in the premise leads to
errors in the conclusion in every statement into
which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe
regarding matter is immortal, for matter is
temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a
human concept, sometimes beautiful, always
erroneous." (Science and Health, p. 277)
"There is no
connection between Spirit and matter."
(Christian Healing, p. 18)
"Spirit cannot
become matter, nor can Spirit be developed through
its opposite." (Science and Health, p. 550)
"The temporal and
unreal never touch the eternal and real. The
mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and
perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive
never touch the harmonious and self-existent. These
opposite qualities are the tares and wheat, which
never really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they
grow side by side until the harvest; then, Science
separates the wheat from the tares, through the
realization of God as ever present and of man as
reflecting the divine likeness." (Science and
Health, p. 300)
Martha
Wilcox writes:
Mrs.
Eddy and Mr. Kimball and
others who taught in the
College classes to instruct
those who were to be sent out
into the field to teach,
taught that anything that
exists is never to be
destroyed but
fulfilled.
The
impersonal Truth unfolded into
another period of fuller
revelation [i.e., in
advance of Mrs. Eddy's
teaching], and certain
teachers [of the Kimball
school] announced that
organs and functions of our
present body are spiritual
are divine ideas consciously
unfolding. How mortal mind did
resist this unfoldment of
Truth, and everyone who made
these statements were accused
of spiritualizing matter.
Mortal mind said they were
trying to make material organs
into Realities, or divine
ideas. [Note the
self-contradiction.]
It
was amazing to see how mortal
mind clung and still clings
tenaciously to itself as
matter. To mortal thought
matter was something, and to
admit that it was only an
illusion, a misstatement, or a
deception was to be its own
undoing. [It appears
Christian Science is being
mixed with the
so-called "fuller revelation"
explained in the previous and
following
paragraphs.]
But
at this present stage of
illumination or understanding
in human consciousness, the
students of Christian Science
do not hesitate to say that
what appears to be matter is
Spirit; that the so-called
organs of our present body are
Ideas
Actualities
are Spirit, Itself, being
spiritual formations. We
understand and prove that our
present [fleshly]
body, even though regarded as
matter, is demonstrated to be
spiritual or Spirit
expressed.
Martha
W. Wilcox,
CSB
Association
Address,
1939
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"It
is contrary to Christian Science to suppose that
life is either material or organically spiritual."
(Science and Health, p. 83)
"The lecturer,
teacher, or healer who is indeed a Christian
Scientist, never introduces the subject of human
anatomy; never depicts the muscular, vascular, or
nervous operations of the human frame. He never
talks about the structure of the material body."
(Rudimental Divine Science, pp. 11-12)
"It is erroneous to
accept the evidence of the material senses whence
to reason out God . . ." (Miscellaneous
Writings, p. 218)
"Entirely separate
from the belief and dream of material living, is
the Life divine . . ." (Science and Health,
p. 14)
"Wholly apart from
this mortal dream, this illusion and delusion of
sense, Christian Science comes to reveal man as
God's image, His idea, coexistent with Him . . ."
(The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and
Miscellany, p. 5)
"Immortal and
spiritual facts exist apart from this mortal and
material conception." (Science and Health,
p. 213)
"There can be but
one creator, who has created all. Whatever seems to
be a new creation, is but the discovery of some
distant idea of Truth; else it is a new
multiplication or self-division of mortal thought,
as when some finite sense peers from its cloister
with amazement and attempts to pattern the
infinite." (Science and Health, p.
263)
"Why are earth and
mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, and form, if
God has no part in them? By the law of opposites."
(Unity of Good, p. 52)
"The hypotheses of
mortals are antagonistic to Science and cannot mix
with it. This is clear to those who heal the sick
on the basis of Science." (Science and
Health, p. 182)
"The reception or
pursuit of instructions opposite to absolute
Christian Science must always hinder scientific
demonstration." (Science and Health, p.
448)
"Incorrect
reasoning leads to practical error." (Science
and Health, p. 452)
"He, who
understands in a sufficient degree the Principle of
Mind-healing, points out to his student error as
well as truth, the wrong as well as the right
practice." (Science and Health, p. 454)
"Whoever affirms
that there is more than one Principle and method of
demonstrating Christian Science greatly errs,
ignorantly or intentionally, and separates himself
from the true conception of Christian Science
healing and from its possible demonstration."
(Science and Health, p. 456)
"Adulterating
Christian Science makes it void." (Science and
Health, p. 464)
Adam Dickey, CSD,
wrote down the following, after leaving Mrs. Eddy's
room:
Someone in room was
speaking, "Instead of speaking of joints, I should
have said, 'locomotion and action are perfect.'
Mrs. Eddy said, 'Yes, in declaring the perfection
of all things begin with God, not with matter. You
do not arrive at perfection by thinking of material
organism. Begin with Mind and keep your thought
away from all things material.'" (The Divinity
Course and General Collectanea, p.
250)
Clara Shannon, CSD,
recorded Mrs. Eddy's words:
"You must teach the
Truth so long as error is taught and called
Christian Science. Who can do this better than one
whom I have taught for so many years?" (Quoted in
Golden Memories)
Abigail Dyer
Thompson, CSB, writes:
"On another
occasion when I was calling at Pleasant View, I
repeated to our Leader a statement that had been
made to me by a Christian Science worker who, at
the time, was standing in a position of prominence.
I could not reconcile the thought to my own
understanding of metaphysics, and had determined
the next time I saw Mrs. Eddy to ask her if I was
right in refusing to accept it. She said, in
substance, Your own interpretation is entirely
correct, and in this connection I want to impress
upon you one fact: no matter how exalted a position
a Christian Scientist may occupy in the movement,
never accept what he may say as valid unless you
can verify the statement in our textbook, 'Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures.'" (We
Knew Mary Baker Eddy, First Series, p.
69)
More
About this Topic
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Appendix
A
More
information on the two schools of
teaching.
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