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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 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 "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 "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 - Appendix A More information on the two schools of teaching. - Appendix B More information. - Return to the Two Schools Main page

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