What is the background of the “Historical Sketch”?

We were recently asked about authorship of the “Historical Sketch,” a history of the Church of Christ, Scientist, found in the Manual of The Mother Church. Our research led to some interesting discoveries.

While Mary Baker Eddy wrote the Manual, she drafted this account together with a group of students she had taught, the Christian Scientist Association (CSA). According to records in our collection, the CSA first published the “Historical Sketch of the Church of Christ, Scientist” in pamphlet form, in 1879.¹ While that text constitutes an early version of the “Historical Sketch,” it is different from today’s version; notably, it does not include the current statement that the Church was “designed to be built on the Rock, Christ.”² This sketch was later published in the August 1889 issue of The Christian Science Journal.³

In 1895 three of Eddy’s students worked on compiling the first Manual, which was published in September of that year. That edition contained newly adopted By-Laws, as well as those created in 1879, after the Church was first organized. In June 1895, Eddy asked one of these students, Septimus J. Hanna, to draft a new history of the Church—“not in words already published but those of your own.”⁴ However, as indicated in a letter to Hanna the next month, she decided against this. “…now is not the time to recapitulate the Church history,” she wrote.⁵

Instead Eddy wrote a new history, beginning with the 1892 reorganization of the Church as The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. Titled “Formation of the Church,” it appeared in the first edition of the Manual, in September 1895. Her text included this observation:

The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., is designed to be built on the rock, Christ, which includes the understanding and demonstration of Truth, Life, and Love, healing and saving the world from sin, and death; to represent the church universal and reflect the church triumphant.⁶

That new history comprised what eventually became the final three paragraphs of the “Historical Sketch” as we know it today. It first appeared in 1899, in the 10th edition of the Manual—a combination of the CSA’s history and Eddy’s 1895 text.

For more reading on this topic, see our “Ask a Researcher” article “Did Eddy authorize the 89th edition of the Manual?”