When did Eddy first refer to God as “Father-Mother”?

While the Bible calls God “Father,” Mary Baker Eddy made a statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that was profound: “In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity.”¹

Eddy first used “Father and Mother” in reference to God in 1881, in the 3rd edition of Science and Health: “Man was not to presume on the prerogatives of his Creator, but to recognize God the Father and Mother of all.”²

We also looked in the Christian Science periodicals for the first use of “father and mother” in reference to God. That dates from 1883, the founding year of the Journal of Christian Science, which was later renamed The Christian Science Journal. The first use of the specific term “Father-Mother God” is found in a 1896 reference from that publication, quoting Eddy’s work Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, which had recently been published: “When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God, for bread, it is not given a stone, but more grace, obedience, and love….”³

The term “Father-Mother God” first appeared in the 226th edition of Science and Health, published in 1902:

Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, and mortality are inharmonious, are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality.⁴

Referring to God, Eddy used the specific term “Father-Mother” at least five separate times in Science and Health and at least 13 separate times in her other writings.