Mary Baker Eddy’s Experience During the Civil War

The U.S. Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, had a profound impact on the lives of every American who lived through it. Eddy was no exception; both her son and several friends served, and she herself lived through incredible hardships at a time when the entire country was...

“Present Order of Services”

“Order of Services,” (Church Manual 120-121), was originally published in the Christian Science periodicals. In August 1889 Mary Baker Eddy introduced a notice in The Christian Science Journal that, for the first time, mentioned the order of services.4 In...

Mary Baker Eddy and John Greenleaf Whittier

Eddy was a lifelong admirer of the work of Whittier (1807-1892). An avid scrapbooker, she clipped his poems out of literary magazines, and later quoted his words in her own published writings. The archives also contain an unpublished poem she wrote sometime before...

The “Great Litigation”

The litigation consisted of two lawsuits: Eustace vs. Dickey, and Dittemore vs. Dickey. The first lawsuit was between the Trustees of The Christian Science Publishing Society and the Christian Science Board of Directors; the second was between John V. Dittemore, a...

Christian Science Reading Rooms 1887–1910

Christian Science Reading Rooms 1887–1910 (Updated January 2019)The beginnings of Christian Science Reading Rooms can be dated to January 1887. According to a later article in The Christian Science Journal, in that month the “Free Dispensary of Christian Science...