(Updated June 18, 2026)
Mary Baker Eddy was a lifelong admirer of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). An avid scrapbooker, she clipped his poems out of literary magazines and later quoted his words in her own published writings.
In 1868 Eddy was living in Amesbury, Massachusetts, with her student Sarah Bagley, who was a family friend of Whittier. That July the two women paid him a visit. He was suffering from a variety of ailments, as he had throughout most of his life. In previous months he had written frequently to friends, complaining of his precarious health. According to Eddy, Bagley had proposed the visit with the warning that Whittier might not live much longer.
She and Bagley arrived at his home to find Whittier in a frail state, coughing constantly and shivering, despite the fact that it was midsummer and he was in front of a roaring fire.
Eddy says she spoke with the poet for some time, “in the line of [Christian] Science,” and that by the end of their conversation he seemed much improved. She also remembers that as they left, Whittier said, “I thank you, Mary, for your call; it has done me much good.”1 She received word the next day that he had left his sickbed to walk down to the village.
In 1872 Eddy sent Whittier (courtesy of Bagley) an early manuscript of her work “Questions and Answers in Moral Science,” which would later become the chapter “Recapitulation” in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Correspondence with Bagley indicates that he thought very highly of it, praising some sections.2 Eddy also sent Whittier an inscribed copy of Science and Health.3 After his death, it was found among his belongings.4
