Did Mary Baker Eddy say it? “Give me higher, holier, purer motives”
From left: Lida W. Fitzpatrick, 1907. P06925; Janet T. Colman, n.d. P00472. L. W. Cook; Laura E. Sargent, n.d. P01552. Minnie B. Weygandt; Minnie A. Scott, 1907. P06932.
We have been asked about a brief prayer attributed to Mary Baker Eddy. Sometimes its wording is given as “O divine Love, give me higher, holier, purer motives, self-abnegation, inspiration, and spiritual love.”
Several individuals who served on Eddy’s staff have mentioned different versions of this prayer in reminiscences. While they all attribute it to Eddy, each provides a slightly different context and timeframe.
Laura Sargent provides the earliest reference we have to this prayer. She studied Christian Science under Eddy and worked for her at various times between 1890 and 1910. Although the entry itself is not dated, the notebook in which Sargent referenced the prayer spans the period from July 1901 to January 1902. The National Christian Scientist Association (NCSA) to which she refers was established in January 1886 and held its first annual meeting in Boston.1 Her entry included this:
First National Association in Boston. The call from Mrs Eddy the prayer message“O divine Love give me higher holier purer self abnegating motives and desires and spiritual asperations”[sic].2
Lida W. Fitzpatrick also studied Christian Science under Eddy and worked on her staff in Concord, New Hampshire. On May 8, 1907, Fitzpatrick recorded in her notebook that Sargent had shared this statement with her:
Mrs. L.S. repeated a prayer given to the early students,
O Love! Give me higher, holier, purer, selfabnegated motives and desires, and spiritual inspiration.3
Minnie A. Scott, a worker in Eddy’s household from 1906 to 1909, wrote in her reminiscence that Eddy instructed the workers in a similar prayer, during a stressful time in 1907 when the “Next Friends” lawsuit was under way. (The suit, which aimed to prove Eddy mentally incompetent and not in control of her business affairs, was ultimately dismissed.) Scott remembered this:
She [Eddy] called us all to her study and said, “We are never worse for persecution but better because we turn more unreservedly to God; now we all must lift our thought to God and pray like this—O divine Love, give me higher, holier, purer motives, self-abnegation, inspiration, and spiritual love.”4
Eddy’s student Janet T. Colman noted in an undated reminiscence that Eddy had given this prayer at the NCSA meeting in Boston in 1886. Colman wrote that she had been unable to remember the prayer afterward but that some time later it had come to her, with help from fellow student William B. Johnson:
… later on one evening as I was studying [our] text-book, Science and Health, I heard a voice say, “I will bring all things to your remembrance”; and then this prayer began to unfold that our Leader had given us as “God’s Message” to us so long before. “O Lord give me higher, purer, holier desires. O Lord, give me more self-abnegating desires. O Lord give me a desire for more love.” Mary Baker Eddy. The last line given to me by our clerk, Wm. B. Johnson. He remembered it after I told him what came to me.5
- The NCSA granted membership to all class-taught students of Christian Science. Its predecessor was the Christian Scientist Association, which was formed in 1876 and only included students taught by Eddy.
- Laura E. Sargent, 1901, Reminiscence, 33–34 [pagination for transcription].
- Lida W. Fitzpatrick, “Notes taken in Mrs. Eddy’s home ‘Pleasant View’ by Lida W. Fitzpatrick,” 5 April 1907–2 June 1907, Reminiscence, 6.
- We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. II (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 2011), 377.
- Janet T. Colman, “Mrs. Janet Colman’s Reminiscences,” n.d., Reminiscence, 14.