The Mount Auburn Cemetery is a sprawling memorial garden in a pastoral setting located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Baker Eddy’s book, despite the questions surrounding its authorship, has remained a best seller for decades and was listed among others as one of the “75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed The World,” by the Women’s National Book Association.

In each of those communities, the congregants present the Christian Science Reading Room as a public service. Today there exist approximately 1,700 Christian Science churches in 76 countries. While it is patently clear Baker Eddy had her detractors in her life, her influence cannot be denied.

Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is quite unmistakable.” Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across her paid polisher’s page is as plain as the elephant’s in a Sunday-school procession. I cannot know, but I am convinced, that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be inconsequential. “Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Writing in his own work entitled Christian Science, noted American satirist Mark Twain shared his opinion on the quality of Baker Eddy’s authorship: This best selling tome was criticized for its direct plagiarism of Baker Eddy’s mentor, Phineas Quimby, as well as its strikingly similar message to that of the Bhagavad-Gita as well. Rumors abounded the Baker Eddy both attended and even sometimes led seances in parlors in and around Boston, Massachusetts.īaker Eddy also looked eastward for influence, appropriating much of the Bhagavad-Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture, in her own book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She was alleged to have dabbled in Spiritualism, a practice that, in the 1800’s was viewed akin to heresy. The Spiritual Journey of Mary Baker Eddyīefore finally founding the Christian Science church, Baker Eddy sought enlightenment down several non-traditional paths. The teachings of Quimby profoundly affected Baker Eddy and are widely regarded as the foundational ethos for the church she later founded. Not long after leaving school, Baker Eddy, who had always had a strong interest in the concepts and study of spirituality, found a mentor in Phineas Quimby, a man who professed that medicines and physicians were no better for curing suffering and illness than faith and our own minds. After some time, Baker Eddy’s father relented, enrolling her in a local school. The bulk of her early education was arrived at by self-teaching, reading texts and studying with her brothers who were receiving a more formal education. In later years, psychiatrists and historians attributed these episodes to being psychosomatic in nature, perhaps as a response to the strict and cool manner in which her father parented Baker Eddy and her siblings.īaker Eddy was regarded as being exceptionally intelligent and headstrong. Baker Eddy’s mother took on the more traditional role of caretaker and nurturer.īaker Eddy often took ill as a child, experiencing fainting spells and severe and debilitating bouts of energy depletion. Her father, a strict religious practitioner, ensured the family lived by the prevailing Puritan values of the day, doing honest but hard work each day of the week, except Sunday, the day of rest. Mary Baker Eddy was born in the summer of 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire. A Legacy in Perpetuity: The Mary Baker Eddy Mausoleum.The Spiritual Journey of Mary Baker Eddy.Upon her passing, The Boston Globe lauded her saying, “She did a wonderful – an extraordinary work in the world and there is no doubt that she was a powerful influence for good.” Her enigmatic personality was both reviled and revered, approaching sainthood in the eyes of some, while others believed her to be a charming, albeit hypocritical, huckster. She lived her entire life in the New England region of the United States. Mary Baker Eddy (J– December 3, 1910) was a religious leader and author who was responsible for founding the Christian Science church.

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