Did Mary Baker Eddy write it? “Age”

We have sometimes been asked about an article attributed to Mary Baker Eddy. Titled “Age,” it is from the 1989 compilation Lessons of the Seventh Day by Richard Oakes. He worked in the London unit of the Carpenter Foundation, an organization first created in the United States by Gilbert Carpenter and his son, Gilbert Carpenter, Jr. The elder Carpenter served as a secretary on Eddy’s staff from April 1905 to April 1906 and, together with his son, devoted much of his time to collecting copies of writings attributed to Eddy and her students, as well as anecdotes of her life.

Because the Carpenters made little effort to weed out inauthentic pieces from genuine items, some of the statements in their books have proved on investigation not to be by Eddy at all. In addition, pieces known to be authentic have not been transcribed accurately.

Further information on the Carpenters and their publications can be found in our website article “What are the ‘blue book’ and the ‘red book’?”

We reviewed “Age” in an attempt to identify the sources of the various passages. Excerpts below are paired with brief explanations of their sources:

The added wisdom of age and experience is strength, not weakness, and we should understand this, expect it, and know that it is so — then it would appear.

With the exception of a punctuation error toward the end, this passage can be found in “Answers to Questions” by Eddy, published in the August 1884 Christian Science Journal.

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I ask for you to keep a time for meditation every day. Ponder in thought your infinite harmonious Christ-expressing selfhood, and claim it as you. Drink in its unspeakable safety. All the truth and beauty of God’s creation is yours and you.

 

Enjoy it in sincere prayer and thanksgiving. Preserve your human sense of yourself rightly by dwelling in definite treatment every day, within the sanctity and integrity of your real selfhood.

 

In that hour of prayer, discard all your false sense of selfhood, all that is involved in the beliefs of birth, heredity, association, time, decay, death. By the grace and authority of God, close your thoughts firmly against the interference of mortal beliefs. Hold yourself open to the plans of God and closed to the plots of satan. Rise into the spiritual forces of your own destiny. Each day will begin and unfold under the authority of divine Mind, and will be well-ordered, rightly balanced, filled with spiritual good.

 

This magnificent spiritual exercise of treating yourself in devoted prayer, and praying for yourself, will keep you in the secret place which is unknown to the senses and open to all that heaven holds for you.

This passage has come to our attention before, and we have not located any evidence to show that Eddy wrote it. Because of this, we are unable to authenticate it. However, there is an authentic letter on a similar topic from which it may have been derived. See Did Mary Baker Eddy write it? A letter to Septimus J. Hanna.

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In proportion as the law of Truth is understood and accepted, it obtains in the personality as well as character. The deformities and infirmities, said to be inevitable results of age, under the opposite mental impressions, disappear. You change the physical manifestations in proportion to your changed thoughts of the effects of accumulated years; expecting an increase of usefulness and vigor, from advanced years, with as much faith as you look for decrepitude and ugliness, a favorable result would be sure to follow.

This passage comes from “Answers to questions of inquirers in regard to Christian Science” by Mary Baker Eddy. It was published in the Christian Science Series on May 1, 1889:

In answer to the question, “Is it possible to change the aged form to one of youth, beauty and immortality without the change called death?” Mrs. Eddy says: “In proportion as the law of Truth is understood and accepted, it obtains in the personality as well as character. The deformities and infirmities said to be the inevitable results of age, under the opposite mental impressions, disappear. You change the physical manifestations in proportion to your changed thoughts of the effect of accumulated years; expecting an increase of usefulness and vigor from advanced years with as much faith as you look for decrepitude and ugliness, a favorable result would be sure to follow. The added wisdom of age and experience is strength, not weakness, and we should understand this, expect it, and know that it is so, then it would appear” .

A similar version of this statement appeared in Eddy’s article “Answers to Questions,” published in the August 1884 Journal.

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Life is eternal and unchangeable, and can never grow old, for time is not, and youth is, immortal — you have always existed, and always will exist a perfect, complete and finished work, a spiritual being created of and by Spirit and subject only to spiritual laws.

 

You do now and ever must manifest the God-life that is shining in you. It is working always in every part of your being to will and to do.

 

There can never be any loss of your faculties — for they are of Soul and not of sense. The Life and strength of which you are the constant recipient, are indestructible and infinite, and nothing can prevent their inflow. You are governed and sustained by perfect Love in which there is no fear of helplessness or death. Your faith and trust in the omnipotent power of Truth are perfect, and unclouded, and you know that God is your sufficiency. Never was one of God’s children palsied or helpless, for all His works are good and eternal. There is no mortal mind to say you are old or feeble. There is one infinite Mind, which is the understanding of the truth of your being, and holds you in perfect harmony and health.

These statements attributed to Eddy can be found in Course Divinity and General Collectanea, also known as the “Blue Book,” compiled by the Carpenters and repackaged by Oakes. The Library has not been able to locate this statement anywhere else in our collection therefore we are unable to authenticate it.

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Malicious animal magnetism haunts you with a personality all distorted by mortal suggestions; makes it hideous and hateful to you and urges you to adopt “this” as being created by God. It suggests a mental picture of age, failing strength, failing memory, dim sight, dim hearing, withered skin, bent form and every other suggestion to bolster up the lie of age.

This statement, attributed to Eddy, appears in 500 Watching Points, compiled by Gilbert Carpenter. We are unable to locate it anywhere in our collection and cannot authenticate it.

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Mind is God and seeing or vision must be and is an idea of God, never in nor of matter and never impaired nor lost. This vision is your vision by reflection, and as long as you can see the truth of God, your vision is unimpaired and you can prove it. Free yourself from the thought that you have lost your eyesight and that Christian Science can regain it for you. Instead Christian Science is the truth about your eyesight which was never lost and as this idea appears as your consciousness the belief of material or imperfect eyesight will disappear and the idea of spiritual, perfect, indestructible intelligence will appear as the only sight of Mind, therefore as the only sight of man or woman.

This statement appears in Lessons of the Seventh Day and Six Days of Revelation, both published by Oakes from Carpenter. While this material is attributed to Eddy, we are unable to locate it anywhere in our collection and cannot authenticate it.

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Old age is just as much a claim to be overcome as cancer or any other belief. Overcome the belief in it now. You have to do it sometime.

While this statement appears in other documents that purportedly link it to Eddy, we have never been able to definitively authenticate it.

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God has just told me what age is. Age is God’s open door to eternal Truth.

This statement appears on page 42 of Edward Everett Norwood’s reminiscence, “Reminiscences of my relations with Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science,” dated March 10, 1924. Norwood attributes these words to Eddy.

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(Said to Mrs. Ewing in July 1906): I am 85 years old today . . . I know that you are thinking: “Never record ages”, and that is true—never record ages in your appearance.

Our collection does not contain the statement “never record ages in your appearance.” However, in a letter to Alvin B. and Elizabeth M. Cross, she does make a reference to her 85th birthday.

I had forgotten the 16th of July! —It does not seem to me to be my birthday! Please see S+H page 246 par. 3.

This passage of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures does include the phrase “Never record ages.”

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(Said to Calvin Frye as she looked towards Bow, N.H.): Over there are the hills of Bow where they say I was born, but I was not. I was born in Mind.

This passage appears in Calvin C. Hill’s reminiscence, as excerpted in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Volume I:

Mrs. Eddy then asked me if I had ever seen where she was born and led me out on the rear veranda, which ran the full width of the house. Pointing straight ahead she said, “Right over that big tree, in the distance, are the Bow Hills, where they say I was born.” She paused and looked at me, or rather looked through me with that searching gaze which I later came to know so well. Then, instantly directing thought to man’s spiritual nature and origin, she added, as I recall it, “But I wasn’t, I was born in Mind.” The gaze which followed that statement made an impression on me which can never be erased.¹

In summary, “Age” appears to be a combination of authentic and unauthenticated material attributed to Eddy by several sources and assembled by an unknown author.If you have questions about the authenticity of a document, please feel free to contact the Library’s research staff at [email protected].