Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science was born in 1820. Her early childhood was spent on the farm of her parents, in Bow, New Hampshire. They were deeply religious and the Bible and prayer were the focus of their lives. As a child Mary possessed a great spiritual thirst, a sharp intellect, and a love for people. She alone among her six siblings applied for and was accepted into membership in the Congregational Church in 1838, despite her refusal to accept the doctrine of foreordination.
In 1843, Mary married, but was widowed the next year. Her only child, a son, was born that year. A combination of events including her continuing ill health led her family to place her son in the care of others in 1851. She lost all contact with her son and didn’t see him again for almost 30 years. Her sufferings from circumstances such as these, as well as from the ills of the flesh, drove Mary more deeply into the Bible as she sought the healing Christ. This led to her discovery of Christian Science in 1866. That year she was seriously injured when she fell on some ice and her doctors did not expect her to recover. Later in the day she asked to be given her Bible, and turned to one of the healings of Jesus. As she read, the words of Jesus “I am the way the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6) flooded into her heart and thought. She was suddenly filled with the conviction that her life was in God – that God was the only Life, the only I AM. And in that instant she was healed.
After three years of searching the Scriptures, reading little else, she wrote and published the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She described this search as “sweet, calm and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing.” (Science and Health p109) She later founded and established the Christian Science Church together with its periodicals, the weekly Christian Science Sentinel, the monthly Christian Science Journal, and its world renowned newspaper The Christian Science Monitor. Mary Baker Eddy passed away in 1910.
Definitive biography.
The trilogy by Robert Peel: “Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery”, “Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial” and “Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority”.
Shorter Biography.
Christian Science and It’s Discoverer. by E. Mary Ramsey.