Why is there no Bible Lesson titled “Principle”?

In “Recapitulation,” the fourteenth chapter of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy named seven synonyms for God: “… Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.”¹ Whereas six of these synonyms each form one of the 26 topics for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons, there is no Lesson titled “Principle,” and Library patrons have frequently asked if there is a reason for this.

The first issue of the Quarterly appeared in 1890. At that time, the Lessons had different subjects each week, based on the International Series, an interdenominational Bible study publication. For a related timeline, see “The development of the Quarterly.”

In 1898 Eddy implemented the fixed rotation of 26 weekly subjects.² We have no documentation as to why she did not choose “Principle” as one of the Lessons. But our research confirms that she felt her choices were divinely inspired.

Irving Tomlinson, one of Eddy’s students and also a member of the Bible Lesson Committee for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, provided an account in his 1945 book Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy:

A few years after the establishment of these Bible Lessons a member of the committee expressed dissatisfaction that the subjects which Mrs. Eddy had provided for the Bible Lessons which numbered only twenty-six. A committee of workers in The Mother Church, feeling that there ought at least to be one subject for every Sunday in the year, proceeded to compile an additional list of twenty-six subjects. As a member of the Bible Lesson Committee, with my home in Concord, I was requested to present them to Mrs. Eddy.

 

Not until many weeks after doing so did I hear anything fur­ther with regard to these proposed subjects. In company with others, on September 13, 1901, I was called to Pleasant View on a matter of business for Mrs. Eddy, and the little company was gathered in conference in the library. When the business was finished, Mrs. Eddy called me to a seat beside her and, turning to me, she said, so energetically that I almost jumped from the sofa, “That will never do —- that will never do!” What she meant I did not know, but not leaving me long in ignorance, she con­tinued: “The additional list of topics sent me for the Lessons are needless. They can all be used under the present list of subjects, which include every one of those you gave me. Tell the commit­tee the original subjects were given of God —- they are sufficient, and they will remain forever.”³