When was Mary Baker Eddy called “prayerless”?

We are sometimes asked questions about the account of a Boston newspaper that referred to Mary Baker Eddy as “prayerless.” In an article titled “Prayer and Healing; Supplemental,” published in the March 18, 1885, issue of the Boston newspaper Zion’s Herald, Professor Luther Tracy Townsend diminished the work of faith healers. Townsend, a theology professor at Boston University, wrote this:

But as to the proposed word of caution; if you are sick, suffering only ‘‘from a derangement of a vital function in which its action is interrupted,” you are no more likely to be cured, judging from facts, by applying to Boston Faith College, than you are, or, at least, than others are, by a resort to “saints’ relics,” ‘‘metallic tractors ” (or bronzed wooden-tractors), ‘‘blue glass,” “Jacob the Zouave,” the pantheistic and prayerless Mrs. Eddy of Boston, or a negro woman in New York who can cure those suffering from ‘‘a derangement of vital functions” by the application of oil taken from the tail of a black cat that had died with its throat cut.¹

Eddy wrote a letter to the editor of Zion’s Herald, rebuking Townsend’s charge. While this rebuttal was never published in the newspaper, it appeared in full in the April 1885 issue of The Christian Science Journal. Eddy included the following comment in response to Townsend’s accusation:

As to being “prayerless,” I shall ask you to consider the following:—

 

“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which is in secret shall reward thee openly.”

 

I hope I am not wrong in literally following the advice of Jesus, and were it not because of my desire to set you right on this question, I would feel a delicacy in making the following statement:

 

Three times a day, I retire to seek the divine blessing on the sick and sorrowing, with my face toward the Jerusalem of Love and Truth, in silent prayer to “the Father who seeth in secret,” with child-like confidence that he will “reward openly.” It affords me great joy in being able to state that Jesus’ words were True; as I can testify by personal experience, in a peace that passeth understanding, and in “signs following:” namely, practical demonstration. As to the peace, it is unutterable. As to “signs,” behold the sick who are healed, the sorrowful who are made hopeful, and the sinful, or ignorant, who have become “wise unto salvation!”²

A number of years later, in 1900, it seems Eddy later wrote about this same incident:

…a Doctor of Divinity wrote of me through the press as the prayerless woman charging me with teaching infidelity and pagan doctrines. At that time I was preaching in Boston and each Sunday asking my church to unite with me in silent prayer followed by audible repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.

 

For thirty five years I had been an acceptable member of the Congregational Church (his own denomination) Because God had become to me All in all and I was giving to the world the explanation of my demonstration to His power to heal the sick smote me with tongue and pen. I had however the sympathies of the people and my numerous students are broadcast preaching teaching and healing the sick. While hundreds of thousands are embracing my doctrines in America and across the Atlantic.³

Interestingly, both Townsend and a number of Christian Scientists attended the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions, an interfaith conference held in Chicago. In her book Pulpit and Press, Eddy made the following comment about Townsend’s participation at the Parliament:

In 1893 the World’s Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, used, in all its public sessions, my form of prayer since 1866; and one of the very clergymen who had publicly proclaimed me “the prayerless Mrs. Eddy,” offered his audible adoration in the words I use, besides listening to an address on Christian Science from my pen, read by Judge S. J. Hanna, in that unique assembly.⁴

While Eddy clearly opposed the words Townsend published in Zion’s Herald and the rejection of her response to his words, she remained courteous. In the introductory text to her 1885 Journal article, this explanation was included:

… the purpose of the article was simply to correct a misstatement by Prof. Townsend. We submit the matter to the public without controversy, whether it is right in the light of Scripture teaching, or in accordance with the written or unwritten law of courtesy, that a newspaper should admit in its columns a misstatement (we wish to confine ourselves to the most gentle and courteous terms possible) and not allow the other party concerned to at least explain away such misstatement.⁵