From the Papers: The beginnings of a worldwide movement

Today The First Church of Christ, Scientist, is a global church. But when did it first start showing expansion beyond the United States? The Mary Baker Eddy Papers team is starting to see some clues—beginning with Canada.

Each time we publish a new letter at marybakerddypapers.org, a new pin drops on our Map of Letters Written to Mary Baker Eddy. This map offers a way to visually trace the spread of Christian Science across space and through time. It allows you to look at all the locations from where letters were sent, for a single year or cumulatively over time. As you click on pins, you can drill down to read individual letters.

The year 1885 marks the first pin drop for Canada.¹ Selina Jane Currier wrote to Mary Baker Eddy from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, on January 25 of that year. She reported that she had been healed through the treatment of a Christian Science practitioner, adding, “We are now reading your Science & Health and are much impressed and benefited, and desire to understand and learn all we can of the wonderful Science of Christian healing and help others to the same source to be healed.”²

Lulie W. Winchester wrote to Eddy from St. Catharines, Ontario, on October 28, also asking about Christian Science healing. As we’ve seen repeatedly in Eddy’s correspondence, one of her students—that time Sue Ella Bradshaw—had been sharing Christian Science with others as she traveled. Winchester noted that Bradshaw told her “a good deal” about it as they journeyed east together from California.³

And we recently dropped another pin, to mark a letter from a woman who also wrote to Eddy from Ontario. Jane S. Yorke ordered a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures on October 8, 1886. Her path to that textbook followed one we’ve seen repeatedly across Eddy’s correspondence. First she learned about Science and Health through The Christian Science Journal. Then she wrote to Eddy, explaining, “A Few months ago I received a copy of your Journal and have perused it with great care as well as interests, and can say that I am delighted with it and am thirsting for more knowledge of this Science.”⁴ More easily ported and less expensive than Science and Health, the Journal was often shared, serving as many people’s introduction to Christian Science. After reading the magazine and finding value in its message, many found that purchasing Science and Health became their next step, as did Yorke.

King Street, Looking North. From Souvenir of St. Stephen, N.B. : photo-gravures, St. Stephen, N.B. :D. Will McKay, © 1896. 

In her letter, Yorke observed, “Christian Healing is needed in Canada as much as in other countries….” Indeed, other Canadians were seeking Christian Science.⁵

A few months prior, Eddy had received letters from the Canadian province of New Brunswick, as Christian Science crossed the border there from Calais, Maine. John Veazey was living in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and serving as the rector of an Episcopal church across the St. Croix River in the state of Maine, when he wrote to Eddy on July 21, 1886:

I am desirous of attending your metaphysical College, having been convinced of the truth & value of Christian Science by the testimony of friends, & because my dear sister who had been an invalid for twelve years & whom I thought beyond human aid, has been almost entirely healed by Miss Tyter who is doing a most Christlike work in Calais Maine (near here) & vicinity.⁶

Like Yorke, Veazey had also read the Journal before purchasing Science and Health: “I have been reading the Xtn. Scien Journal & expect to receive a copy of ‘Science & Health’ in a day or two, to which I shall devote the month of August.” He actually ended up taking Primary class instruction with Eddy that August. In his letter he also asked whether there was “anything about the science which would prevent me from officiating as an Episcopalian clergyman after embracing it.” In his next letter to her, the postscript stated, “I have been reading ‘Science & Health’ & find my former questions answered. Am willing however to give up anything for Truth —” He became a member of the Christian Scientist Association in October of the following year.⁷

Two of Veazey’s sisters also became active in the Christian Science movement. Lucretia A. “Annie” Veazey was one of its first public practitioners in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She wrote to the Christian Science leader in December 1886, reporting that she had just studied with Eddy’s student Julia Bartlett.⁸ Mary Flora Veazey, a younger Veazey sibling, also became a practitioner and she, too, was a Bartlett student. We have one letter from her in our collections—an order for Science and Health written on November 10, 1886, requesting the edition “with Mrs. E’s portrait if published.”⁹

Canada will gain more pins on our map, representing letters sent in the coming months and years. Other locations outside the US will also mark the further expansion of Christian Science into a global movement. Keep traveling with us, as we publish more letters sent to Mary Baker Eddy from people around the world.