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Mary Baker Eddy: A Life from Beginning to End

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Mary Baker Eddy * * *Free BONUS Inside!* * * Read On Your Computer, MAC, Smartphone, Kindle Reader, iPad, or Tablet. Mary Baker Eddy stands unique in our collective remembrances of supposed prophets of the bygone past. She was a girl that quite literally felt a calling at an early age when she thought she heard a supernatural voice call her name. Shortly thereafter she was intermittently beset with chronic illnesses and remarkable bouts of healing. Mary Baker Eddy did not claim to understand where her spontaneous remissions were coming from until much later in life; it was in old age, when no one expected Mary Baker Eddy to do much of anything except retire, that she entered into her great final act, and in doing so, she rocked the entire religious world to its core. Inside you will read about... ✓ Healed by Prayer ✓ Early Love and Loss ✓ Separated from Her Son ✓ Mary during the American Civil War ✓ The Birth of Christian Science And much more! Whether or not you believe her claims of healing and divine intervention, the story of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, is a riveting one all the same.

45 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 28, 2019

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135 people want to read

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
Profile Image for Montzalee Wittmann.
5,263 reviews2,353 followers
November 29, 2019
Ok, a bit boring at times

Mary Baker Eddy: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History tells of her life and I had NO idea who she was before reading this. I think her family, especially her dad was strange and maybe that's why she believed the way she did.
Profile Image for Bettye McKee.
2,191 reviews158 followers
December 12, 2020
Christian Science beginnings

Mary Baker, as a young child, several times heard a voice calling her name. Raised in a strict religious environment, she was sure that God was calling her.

Through the many tragedies in her life, she was often ill and bedridden. When she recovered, she was convinced that it was due to her faith in God. Later she heard about a healer named Quimby and paid him a visit. Following his treatment (which many attribute to hypnotism), she felt that she was fully cured and told Quimby that his healing gift was God working through him. He stoutly denied this, claiming that he was not even a Christian.

Mary nonetheless proceeded to build a new religion on this basis. The book tells how many were trained in this healing method, but no testimonials are provided of the people who were healed.

All the same, it is an interesting look at the beginnings of the Christian Science faith.

7
Profile Image for Mozelle.
242 reviews2 followers
May 19, 2024
Remarkable

I never knew! She would have made a great Catholic! I am impressed with her accomplishments in a time women couldn't even vote! Too bad about her child!
Profile Image for Dale.
1,955 reviews66 followers
March 26, 2022
An Imbalanced Biography

Published in 2019 by Hourly History

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) is the founder of the controversial Christian sect knows as Christian Science or The Church of Christ, Scientist in the late 1800s. I picked this short biography because I know something of the teachings of Christian Science, I knew next to nothing about its founder.

Mary Baker Eddy grew up in small town New Hampshire and was often sickly as a child and young adult. It is unclear whether her illnesses were due to physical or nervous problems. As was typical for the time, life was hard and there were many tragic deaths in the early part of her life, including an older brother who served as a mentor, her husband while she was pregnant, a fiance and her mother. Her family took over raising her son and did not let her see him for years. Her son's caretakers moved away and let him believe that Mary Baker Eddy was dead. They did not speak to one another again until he was 34 years old.

None of this, of course, make Mary Baker Eddy a national religious figure, although it would be reasonable to suppose that these experiences had an impact on her religious views.

From 1862 to 1866, Mary Baker Eddy became involved with a mesmerist named Phineas Quimby. Quimby claimed to be able to heal people with his powers and Mary Baker Eddy believed him. She believed that Quimby had stumbled upon an important principle, even though he was not religious. She continued his work after he passed away in 1866.

The beauty and the weakness of this book series is the brevity of each book. They are designed to be read in about an hour, which means I can explore a whole new area or person with little time commitment. But, I always end up with questions. In this book, I was left wondering how this woman turned a fairly small religious movement into an established church with its own publishing house and tens of thousands of members at a time when women did not even have the right to vote. This book is skewed too much to the early years and covers the last 40+ years of her life with a mere 3 pages of text. Too bad. A bit of judicious editing would have ensured some balance in the telling of the story of her life.

Because of that imbalance, I give this short biography a grade of 2 stars out of 5.

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3,961 reviews21 followers
November 17, 2019
Having never heard of Mary Baker Eddy before, I was interested to read of her life.  She seems to have been a strong-willed individual who was called to religion at an early age.  She also seems to have been afflicted with various illnesses over her life.  After googling Eddy's name, I found that she believed that sickness was an illusion that could be corrected by prayer alone.  This book did not say this in so many words, but it implied it.

I don't understand why this book was so evasive about Eddy's beliefs.  She determined that disease is a mental error rather than a physical disorder.  The sick should be treated, not by medicine, but by 'a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.' ( Eddy, Science and Health: "Question. — What is God?")

If you pay attention to any news, you will be aware that many Christian Scientists have been prosecuted in recent years because they withhold medicine or surgery from family members, and then those members die.  That may be why their numbers are diminishing.  None of this was mentioned in this book.
Profile Image for Belinda Earl  Turner.
390 reviews4 followers
October 6, 2020
A Brief Biography

Mary Baker Eddy was born on July 16, 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire. She had five older siblings. As a child she was very devout in her prayers and had had episodes in which she heard the voice of God
calling her, similar to the experience of Samuel in the Bible.
Beginning as a young child she had periods of debilitating illness and pain alternating with remission. She attributed the remission to God’s healing power through prayer especially when she experienced healing at the hands of a Dr. Quimby as an adult.
As an adult she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and The Christian Science Monitor in 1908. The Monitor has won several Pulitzer Prizes for articles in it.
It would have been interesting if the author of this book had devoted a paragraph or two to what the Church of Christ, Scientist believes, because those beliefs largely state those of Mary Baker Eddy.
♥️✝️🐑✡️♥️
102 reviews
July 15, 2019
I remember hearing the name Mary Baker Eddy somewhere, but I didn't know anything at all about her. It was unfortunate that she was so sickly for most of her life and especially that she and her son were kept apart for so much of their lives. However, I guess it was more common in a time when there was little way for a single mother to support herself and a child.

It's interesting how she came to have as much influence on her followers as she did, but even today religious leaders and faith healers can generate a large and devoted and following.

The book did okay at reporting on the events of her life and I realize that the establishment of her church and the Christian Science Monitor came toward the end of it, but I still would like to have read more on the history of their endurance over the years, instead of just a very brief mention of it. I felt that it would've been worth some more coverage since they've endured this long after her passing.
444 reviews1 follower
November 28, 2021
It seems to me that a biography of a women who started a religious sect would have more information about her beliefs than this. We learn that she was sickly both as a child and adult. We read that family members died and that made her sad and resulted in her having to rely on friends for room and board much of her adult life. Eventually she met a "faith healer/hypnotist" and she became healthy. Then she started a church.
I realize "Hourly History" gives condensed histories that you can read in an hour or less. Some give very good synopses but this one fall a bit short.
153 reviews4 followers
June 7, 2019
Strange Woman and Stranger Life

I appreciate the history but was bewildered by how this pathetic, sickly woman could conjure up such strange ideas and claim that they were biblical. She obviously had a gift for writing to have been able to spread this religion she invented to so many people who bought into it.
Profile Image for Rubin Carpenter.
687 reviews
May 16, 2021
An incomplete Biography

This Story of the Strange and Tragic life of
Mary Baker Eddy has some gaps in it. although it started well enough about midway it started to speed up the book should have had at least 10 more pages to fill in some years toward the end an unsatisfactory account
Profile Image for Seb.
78 reviews
June 17, 2019
A good read

Interesting. I'd never heard of Mary Baker Eddy before this. A strange person for sure but an interesting one nonetheless.
228 reviews
November 12, 2019
Wow

I never knew about the history of Christian Science. Interesting. And the practice of the time for dealing with widowed mothers.
Profile Image for Steve Kudlo.
1 review
January 27, 2021
Good, short book. I especially liked the part that reveals that MBE responded to situations in her life with calmness instead of enthusiasm, to which God responded.
75 reviews1 follower
March 13, 2023
Very good biography

It give a summary of the most important events in her life. It is very good! I recommend it greatly.
Profile Image for Hyacinth.
2,095 reviews16 followers
May 25, 2021
I knew of her by hearing her name in various conversations. Read snippets about her life but this concise biography really helped me to see Eddy in a different light. I read it in one sitting because it drew me in. It is interesting to learn about Western Church history in all of its many facets. It makes me want to do more readings on the the Church of Christ Scientist. The issue with her son though burned me up!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews

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