Mary Baker Eddy Quotes

When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts.

Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need.

jealousy is the grave of affection

Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings.

To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.

Reject hatred without hating.

Truth is immortal; error is mortal.

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.

Experience teaches us that we do not always receive the blessings we ask for in prayer.

To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.

Happiness is spiritual, born of truth and love.

There should be painless progression, attended by life and peace....Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God....Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize harmony and as the spiritual reality and discord as the material unreality. Chapter VII pp. 224 and 228 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air.

evil.

Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the centre, though not the boundary, of the affections.

The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness — yea, the divine nature — appear in man and the universe never to disappear. -Mary Baker Eddy (SH 509:24)

Give to it the place in our institutions of learning now occupied by scholastic theology and physiology, and it will 142 eradicate sickness and sin in less time than the old systems, devised for subduing them, have required for self-establishment and propagation.

Mary Baker Eddy: “Home is the dearest spot on earth, and should be the centre, not the boundary, of the affections.

by means of what we now call hypnosis an individual could exercise an influence for better or worse upon the mental condition of his neighbor.

There is too much animal courage in society and not 29 sufficient moral courage. Christians

Whenever remarkable cures have taken place, we may be pretty sure that suggestion has been at work.

~ FRANZ ANTON MESMER (1733-1815) ~ You must know that the will is a powerful adjuvant in medicine. PARACELSUS

No power can withstand divine Love.

At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good.

God is Love.” More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go.

For an hour the organism would be charged with magnetic energy; or, as we should prefer to phrase it today, by monotony and expectation the organism would be made ripe for suggestive therapy.

From the beginning of time man has undoubtedly more often been cured of his ailments by suggestion than by any other means, no matter how reluctant medical practitioners are to admit the fact.

So what actually goes on with all this religion business? Does it really matter whether you’re a Gnostic, a Christian, a Muslim, a Shi’ite, a Hindu, a Taoist, a Rosicrucian, a Jew, a Witch or a Jehovah’s Witness? Not in the slightest. (Well, it might matter if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness). Does it matter if you follow the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, Ramakrishna or Mary Baker Eddy? Of course not. Does it matter if your ritual object or talisman is a cup, an amulet, a tabernacle, a horseshoe, holy water, a wishbone, a Sanctus bell, a St. Christopher, a baptismal font, a rabbit’s foot, rosary beads, a broomstick or a seven-branched candlestick? No, it’s just something to focus your mind on. The real power is within you. Just as long as it doesn’t become a cop-out. Which it so often does. Why? I’ll tell you. Because Rag, Tag & Bobtail are not willing to take responsibility for their own lives. They need someone to tell them what to do and what to believe. But in reality you don’t need anyone. It’s all there inside you. You grant your own absolution. Hey, it’s your life! You certainly have more control over your ultimate destiny than a priest.

Physician, heal thyself,” runs the adage; but it was characteristic of Mary Baker as of so many mental healers, that the magician who cured thousands could never fully succeed in curing herself.

today our physicians make use of radium: but no matter the method adopted, every one of them depends to a large extent for its efficacy upon the power it has of arousing the will-to-health in the patient.

The physical affirmative should be met by a mental negative.” Nor should the sufferer ever admit to himself that he feels pain, for experience shows that one who pays attention to a pain increases it by autosuggestion.

All those who came in contact with him agreed that his main characteristic was his complacent and unshakable patience. Slow and steady rather than hot-blooded and vivacious, this worthy Swabian took quiet note of the phenomena occurring around him.

History extols, not the beginner but the completer. She puts the victor on a pedestal, while leaving the mere combatant in obscurity. Thus has it been with Mesmer, the first of the new psychologists, whose ungrateful task it was to be born before his time.

He now became aware that his amazing influence over his fellow mortals did not arise from the lifeless mineral wherewith he performed his manipulations, but from himself, from the living man; that not the magnet but the magnetizer was the wizard who restored health.

At eighty-five, she had paid the inevitable tribute to old age. Her sight was failing, she was growing deaf, she had lost all her teeth, she walked with difficulty. To so proud, so autocratic a woman what could seem more terrible than to expose her infirmities to hostile eyes?

God had told her to take fees for instruction and healing. At first she had not grasped the reason, but then it had become plain to her. By making material sacrifices, the patient strengthens his own faith. The more he has to pay, the more earnestly does he desire to be cured.

The strongest man is always the man of one idea. Devoting to it all his energy, his will, his intelligence, his nervous tension, he often becomes irresistible. Mary Baker was one of these exemplars among monomaniacs, for from 1862 onwards she possessed, or rather was possessed by, one idea and one only.

They are people with a passion for faith, but not intelligent enough to make a faith for themselves. Pure in spirit, but weaklings as a rule, longing for a mediator who will guide them whither they should go, they form the best possible recruits for the support of new religious sects and novel doctrines of one kind or another.

Thou shalt not commit adultery;” in other words, thou shalt not adulterate Life, Truth, or Love, — mentally, morally, or physically. “Thou shalt not steal;” that is, thou shalt not rob man of money, which is but trash, compared with his rights of mind and character. “Thou shalt not kill;” that is, thou shalt not strike at the eternal sense of Life with a malicious aim, but shalt know that by doing thus thine own sense of Life shall be forfeited. “Thou shalt not bear false witness;” that is, thou shalt not utter a lie, either mentally or audibly, nor cause it to be thought. Obedience to these commandments is indispensable to health, happiness, and length of days.

He was sure of one thing only, and on this single security he built up the whole of his teaching: a living man, through his mere presence and through his personal influence, may do more to cure the sick than can any other remedy in the world. “Of all bodies in nature, none is so potent in its influence upon man as is the body of man himself.

Down to the ninetieth year of her life, the spirit of struggle maintained the vitality of this indomitable woman. But there was no longer anyone to fight. At length, therefore, old age, so vainly repudiated, asserted itself irrevocably; death tapped her on the shoulder; the inalterable law of reality prevailed. “The mortal dream of life, substance, feeling, grew weaker in the material frame.” On December 4, 1910, the end came; and late at night, though she had been up and dressed that very day, there lay in the bed at Chestnut Hill the corpse of what had been Mary Baker Eddy, “a bodily shell which faith had forsaken.” Nothing but death had been able to overcome this iron heart.

Thunder does not come from a clear sky, nor yet from a cloud until there has been an accumulation of electrical stresses; and in like manner a miracle, if it is to happen, demands a particular predisposition, a peculiar nervous and religious tension of the mind. No one ever experiences a miracle unless he has long and passionately awaited it.

Mark Baker, Mary’s father, was a man of very strict views, his head being as hard as his fist. “You could not move him any more than you could move old Kearsarge,” his neighbors were wont to say of him — Kearsarge being a nearby mountain. This obstinacy, this indomitable will, was certainly handed down to Mary, the seventh child, born July 16, 1821.

Good fortune and bad are both fine tests of a man’s character. Mesmer had not been boastful or presumptuous in the days of his fame, and now, when the world had suddenly forgotten him, he was modest and stoical. Far from making any attempt to attract attention to himself, when an endeavor was made to recall him into the limelight he rejected the overture.

Unquestionably influenced by the ideas of Christian Science, this Nancy apothecary insisted that every one of us can, by autosuggestion, cure himself. Advancing a stage beyond Mary Baker Eddy, he declared that there was no need for a healer to intermediate between the patient and his suffering, for the patient could do his own suggesting. In fact, said Coué, the patient always does do his own suggesting, and the belief in the need for an outside healer is but one more illusion to be dispelled. But, like Mary Baker Eddy, Coué with his doctrine of autosuggestion, is, in the end, only paying homage to the power of the human mind influenced by what some have termed faith or will, but by what he preferred to speak of as imagination.

His thick-skinned placidity was unassailable. Calmness, toughness of mind, indefatigable and stubborn patience, these were his most salient traits. It was thanks to his unusual modesty and reserve, to his total lack of false ambition, and to his artless simplicity of demeanor, that so notable and so wealthy a man numbered among his innumerable acquaintances in Viennese society no enemies but only friends.

They called on the parents of the girl and filled them with alarm by suggesting that the empress would withdraw the yearly pension of two hundred ducats if their daughter’s sight were restored, and, further, that the young pianist would lose half her attraction on the concert platform if she possessed normal vision. The possibility of having to forgo the yearly income worked like a charm upon Father and Mother Paradies.

The will-to-power, when it can find no outlet, is directed inwards; the frustrated impulse plays havoc with the sufferer’s own nerves. Before puberty, Mary had not infrequently had convulsive seizures and had given other signs of excessive nervous excitability. When it became obvious to her that such attacks aroused sympathy and attention, she began consciously or unconsciously (the border line is hard to define) to cultivate these hysterical fits.

Now it would be a shoemaker who, returning home of an evening, wearied by many hours’ work at the machine, wanted as recreation to learn about “higher things” and was glad if anyone would help him to interpret the words of Scripture. Now it would be some withered old woman, dreading the near approach of death, and to whom tidings of immortality brought consolation. For such as these, persons with little intelligence and yet having a passion for the spiritual, the encounter with Mary Baker was a great experience.

In her utmost need she did what she had so tyrannically forbidden others to do. Giving up the attempt to save Gilbert Eddy by the powers of mind, she called in a regular practitioner, a “confectioner of disease,” Dr. Rufus K. Noyes. For once, she capitulated to reality. This representative of official medicine prescribed the appropriate remedies for a failing heart, but these likewise were unavailing. The patient died on June 3, 1882, the third husband of the woman who had declared illness and death to be nothing but error and illusion.

in Boston, arriving there with ample funds, she purchased in the best quarter of the city, on Columbus Avenue, a three-storied mansion, built of stone, and handsomely furnished. The lecture theater was especially sumptuous, for in Boston she expected audiences of the well-to-do, of “refined people,” instead of the poor proletarians who had been her first disciples in Lynn, and this wealthy clientele must be attracted by keeping up a good appearance. A fine silver plate on the door was a further indication of the change of circumstances, of the rise in social level.

Why did this exponent of mental healing use glasses to help her to read, thus correcting “old sight” by earthly means instead of dispelling the error “by mind”? There were other questions no less indiscreet and no less painful. Why did she use a stick to help her to walk? Why did she, the declared enemy of all officially qualified practitioners, consult a dentist and have recourse to such extremely material adjuvants as artificial teeth? Why (perhaps the most crucial question of all) did she at times have morphine administered for the relief of intolerable pain? It was impossible for the founder of Christian Science, the discoverer of an infallible method of healing, to endure the ancient quip: “Physician, heal thyself!” Assuredly,

There is a famous passage in Science and Health which has been spoken of as Mary Baker’s “immortal thesis,” and an alleged distortion of which was the theme of one of the numerous lawsuits in which the founder and the apostles of Christian Science have been involved. In set terms it is here declared that there is neither life, nor truth, nor intelligence, nor substance, in matter. Everything is infinite mind and its everlasting revelation, for God is all in all. Mind is immortal truth, whereas matter is mortal error. Mind is the real and the eternal, whereas matter is the unreal and the temporal. Mind is God and man is his image, wherefore man is not material but mental. Can the reader understand this farrago? If not, all the better.

Should my proposals meet with a rebuff in France, it would be my unhappy fate to leave that country and seek better luck elsewhere. If in the end the whole world proves to be against me, then I can still hope to find a spot on this earth where I may live in peace. Conscious of my own rectitude of purpose, secure from any self-reproach, I am convinced that I shall be able to gather a small company around me, persons I have helped to benefit, and then I shall need no one’s advice, and no one’s interference with what I undertake. If I were to act otherwise, animal magnetism would become no more than a passing fashion. Each would seek to find in it either more, or less, than really exists. It would be used amiss, its utility would become dubious, and it would give rise to a problem whose solution might not be discovered for centuries.

Dr. Noyes. He came, made the examination, and actually showed the widow the diseased aortic valve which had been the material, the “illusory,” cause of death. But now Mrs. Eddy rallied her forces. The doctor’s diagnosis, though confirmed by autopsy, had been wrong. Asa had not died of heart disease, but had been killed by “metaphysical arsenic,” by “mental poison.” Her enemies and his had slain him by telepathic influence. To console herself for her failure to avert the death, and to counteract the effect it might have on the weak-kneed, she gave an interview to a representative of the Post of Boston, and it appeared in that paper two days after the death. Here are some significant extracts: “My husband’s death was caused by malicious mesmerism... I know it was poison that killed him, but not material poison, but mesmeric poison... After a certain amount of mesmeric poison has been administered, it cannot be averted. No power of mind can resist it.

Despite all her exaggerations, despite her defects of character, and despite the hopeless confusion of much of her thought, Mary Baker was unquestionably a woman of genius. She discovered (or rediscovered) some of the fundamental laws of the mind, and turned them to account in her practice. The most important of these is the indisputable fact that every imaginative anticipation of a feeling, such as a pain, tends to transform itself into reality, and that therefore a countersuggestion will often remove that dread of illness which is almost as dangerous as illness itself. “The ills we fear are the only ones that conquer us” — behind such words, however much they may lie open to the onslaught of logical criticism, there lurks a profound truth. Mary Baker was anticipating Coué’s doctrine of autosuggestion when she declared: “The sick hurt themselves when they say that they are sick.” She insisted that the Christian Science practitioner should never accept the patient’s conviction of illness.

She was one of the masters of mental healing; one of those thanks to whose life and influence healing by faith (by mind, by imagination, call it what you please) will always remain of cardinal importance. Thus it is that, “errors and omissions excepted,” this self-taught woman, standing apart from the wisdom of the schools, has acquired a permanent place among the pioneers of psychology, of the science of the soul, illustrating once more that in the history of the human spirit the uninstructed and unteachable impetuosity of a seeming simpleton may do as much for the advance of thought as all the exponents of accredited doctrine. The first task of any new idea is to arouse creative unrest. One who overstates his case drives forward, and does so precisely because he exaggerates. Even error, being radical, stimulates progress. True or false, hit or miss — every faith that a human being has been powerful enough to force upon his fellows expands the boundaries and shifts the landmarks of our spiritual world.

has tended to ignore the forces of mental healing, the psychical “will-to-health” — has failed to take into practical account the fact that, besides such medicaments as arsenic and camphor, there are other remedies to stimulate a flagging vitality; purely spiritual remedies, such as courage, self-confidence, faith, vigorous optimism. Much as our reason may revolt against the futility of the teaching of those who want to kill bacilli by “mind,” to counteract syphilitic infection by “truth,” and to nullify the disastrous effect of arteriosclerosis by “God,” we should make a great mistake were we to ignore the energy which this doctrine can furnish to one who believes in it. We should be closing our eyes to the truth were we to deny that Christian Science has achieved wonderful successes, and, by the profundity of its faith, has brought consolation to numberless persons in moments of despair. Perhaps it is but an intoxicant, is but “dope,” giving no more than a transient support to the nerves as does camphor or caffeine, and temporarily arresting the advance of disease. Still, in giving this temporary relief, it shows once more how the power of the mind can come to the help of the body.

Resurrection. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding. (SH 593:9)

differed sharply from Eddy’s conviction that the human mind, far from being a potentially curative agent, was the cause of disease rather than its cure.

the derivative of experience.” When toward the end of the chapter “Prayer” in Science and Health Eddy writes, “Christians rejoice in secret beauty and bounty, hidden from the world, but known to God,” one senses that her words were rooted in her life.

The calm, strong forces of true spirituality are manifest as health, purity, and a magnanimous self.

The world may lack spirituality, and people may not be able to keep a promise or make a home happy, but human minds are demanding spiritual understanding and reformed attitudes. As with any reform, a transition period will be felt. Transition periods are often unsettling and undesirable, however, why buck the trend when the reform compels us to find permanence and peace in a more spiritual devotion?

Sickness is real, is true that is, to the patient’s frightened perception. Disorders and problems are more than imagination, they are solid convictions of fear or ignorance and therefore need to be dealt with through an accurate comprehension of the truth of being. If Soul-healing is abused by those who are wise in their own conceit, treatment becomes an irksome trouble maker. Instead of scientifically affecting a cure, a boaster in Science starts petty crossfires over those who are disabled and sick. Humanity should not be knocked around with superficial and heartless remarks like: It’s all in your head. Matter is not real. Be more spiritual. You really are perfect.

Why admit that mind influences the body somewhat, yet act as though the organs, hormones, nerves, bones, etc., outweigh the power of Spirit? Controlled by this kind of thinking, people unthinkingly repeat learned reactions. They lean on the artificial or the unintelligent, never discerning how this deprives them of the available superiority of divine Mind.

The Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness that animated him. Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death. His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what spiritual intelligence does for us.

Mind is not an entity inside the brain with the power to go against Life, Truth, and Love, now or anytime.

Mind is not necessarily dependent on the education process. Mind possesses of itself all eloquence, beauty, and poetry. Mind has the power to express prose. Spirit, God, is heard when the human mind’s noise is silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The action of Soul confers the freedom that explains excellent impromptu speeches, admirable movie scripts, or meaningful texts.

if evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured.

Truth 143is God’s remedy for error of every kind, and Truth destroys only what is untrue.

Ignorance, pride, or prejudice closes the door to whatever is not stereotyped.

Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish 154error in any form, and certainly we should not be error’s advocate.

Is it skilful or scientific surgery to take no heed of mental conditions and to treat the patient as if she were so much mindless matter,

Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science.

Truth cannot be contaminated by error.

Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind

Truth is not contaminated by error.

Bertrand Russell was pithier: A combination of Einstein and Mary Baker Eddy.

Since the first settlers arrived in Jamestown and Plymouth, our common life has been shaped by a succession of fascinating, only-in-America faiths: the chilly Deism of the eighteenth century and the warm metaphysical bath of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism; the Mormon theocracy of the nineteenth century and the New Age movements of the 1960s; Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science and L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology; and many, many more. But

Her room is full of books by people who have radio hours. It's the gospel according to Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson — American dynamism gilded onto a platform of individual redemption. It's religion as detergent.

Eddy believed that everyone, not just a few mystics and saints, has an unimaginably rich potential relation to God that can be entered into amidst everyday life.

divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth,—of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love.

The superiority of spiritual power over sensuous is the central point of Christian Science.

The real cross, which Jesus bore up the hill of grief, was the world’s hatred of Truth and Love.

Marriage should signify a union of hearts.

Life, Love, Truth, is the only proof of immortality.

Ignorance, subtlety, or false charity does not forever conceal error; evil will in time disclose and punish itself.

The weapons of bigotry, ignorance, envy, fall before an honest heart.

Man is the expression of God’s being.

Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man immortal.

Peter would have smitten the enemies of his Master, but Jesus forbade him, thus rebuking resentment or animal courage. He said: “Put up thy sword.

Truth should emanate from the pulpit, but never be strangled there.

Take away wealth, fame, and social organizations, which weigh not one jot in the balance of God, and we get clearer views of Principle. Break up cliques, level wealth with honesty, let worth be judged according to wisdom, and we get better views of humanity.

Though bodies are leagues apart and their associations forgotten, their associations float in the general atmosphere of human mind.

Tyranny, intolerance, and bloodshed, wherever found, arise from the belief that the infinite is formed after the pattern of mortal personality, passion, and impulse.

The struggle for Truth makes one strong instead of weak,

Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God.

Truth never made error necessary,