From the Papers: “To prove the ‘Truth’ you had taught us”

Many of Mary Baker Eddy’s early students are known for their long careers as Christian Science healers and teachers. But they all had to start somewhere. As we’ve been publishing letters from the beginning years of the Christian Science movement, we’ve taken note of the earliest letters from some of these students—and of what these reveal about their first efforts to publicly practice what Eddy taught.

One such student was Laura Sargent. She first studied with Eddy in 1884, in a class taught in Chicago. After returning home to Oconto, Wisconsin, she sent Eddy her first letter, detailing her first successful healing—that of her mother’s long-standing ankle injury. In her next letter, Sargent described her work and that of several classmates as they began healing practices. “I know it will make you happy,” she wrote, “to hear we are doing quite good work for such young disciples and are striving to ‘let our light shine before men.’ ”

Sargent attended another Primary class that Eddy taught in December of that year. She also went through two other classes with Eddy in 1886 and 1887. She joined Eddy’s household staff in 1890, serving on and off, for months or years at a time, over the next 20 years.

To read more of Laura Sargent’s correspondence with Mary Baker Eddy, click here.