Sunday, April 5th, 2026 Roundtable

Oh, my God, I offer as a consecrated gift upon Thine altar, a heart dedicated to Thy service, lips speaking only words of charity, love, and truth, thoughts striving to be only the true thoughts of the Mind of God. Help me to endure unto the end, strong in the faith, powerful in the truth, all the influence that I can bring to bear, all the force of tongue or pen that is mine, I offer in Thy service. May heaven help, consecrate, and accept.

from Mary Baker Eddy’s Six Days of Revelation, the green book, page 171

Mrs. Eddy’s Prayer, given at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, 1889

We, to-day, in this class-room, are enough to convert the world if we are of one Mind; for then the whole world will feel the influence of this Mind; as when the earth was without form, and Mind spake and form appeared.

from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 279-280

388 — WATCH that you do not lose sight of the need for continuous progress. Mrs. Eddy once said, “A belief of personal sense that is governed by the Truth is a harmonious belief. A harmonious belief governed by Truth is spiritual sense — understanding.”

This statement gives us the authority for a demonstration to bring out harmony in belief, providing we do not stop there. We must hold in mind the acme of Science, namely, the attainment of spiritual sense, or understanding, through the elimination of the belief in matter, even though this belief has been made harmonious through the action of Truth.

Mrs. Eddy once described Jesus’ progress as follows: “Jesus, in the silent tomb, spiritualized his personal corporeal body to the extent of presenting it sound; then he ascended, laid off his corporeality. All his mechanism was preserved and restored until the ascension. He ate with his disciples, showing that he could digest his food with his natural functions. I always preserve the above harmonious being in my thought, just as Jesus did.”

500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

Alertness to Duty

It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind. By his works he shall be judged, — and justified or condemned.

Church Manual, Article VIII, Sect. 6

The Life Of Christ by Canon Farrar

Through all the disciples experienced, they became more spiritual and understood better what the Master had taught. His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities. They needed this quickening, for soon their dear Master would rise again in the spiritual realm of reality, and ascend far above their apprehension.

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 34

Heretofore they had only believed; now they understood. The advent of this understanding is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost, — that influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecostal Day and is now repeating its ancient history.

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 43

Jesus’ students, not sufficiently advanced fully to understand their Master’s triumph, did not perform many wonderful works, until they saw him after his crucifixion and learned that he had not died. This convinced them of the truthfulness of all that he had taught.

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 45

They no longer measured man by material sense. After gaining the true idea of their glorified Master, they became better healers, leaning no longer on matter, but on the divine Principle of their work. The influx of light was sudden. It was sometimes an overwhelming power as on the Day of Pentecost.

from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 47

Jesus did not make the demonstration over death, but yielded to it — because of the desertion of his disciples. If they had stood by him we should now be in the millennium.

from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy

Easter — Resurrection. We must be resurrected; must put off the old man and put on the new.

If you dress for Easter, your clothes are all in keeping — are clean. You do not put on some clean ones and some soiled ones. Neither can you put on part of the new man and part of the old; you must put on the whole of the new man — the spiritual idea.

If you put a new patch on an old garment, you still have the old garment. There is a time when you take off your old garments before you put on the new. Now if we patch up this body, try to make a better eye, a better limb, etc., we are not putting on the new.

We want to say: eye, you cannot talk to me, I have put you off. Rise to the spiritual sense, then your body will respond; then take no thought what you eat, your clothes, etc., for your heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things. This is the resurrection. The resurrection is not to be resurrected from matter — dust. There never was any life in matter to be resurrected. The resurrection is seeing the real man that was never in matter; he never was sick to be made well. That is the way I did the healing. I never saw the material man before me, but the real man, perfect, and this healed instantaneously, and no relapse. This is the way Jesus healed, as in S. & H. it reads, ‘Jesus beheld the perfect man,’ etc. This is the resurrection.

from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 27

My beloved Board: You know that God, divine Love, reigns, and the Catholic prayers this week (holy week) or any week, to harm your Leader, are powerless. Will you as my Church realize this Truth that destroys error. Do not take me up personally but know mentally and prayerfully that the Catholic prayers to harm anyone are utterly powerless. Evil and sin are nothing. Good and divine Love are infinite, and there is no other power. They are all and govern all.

from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 195

Her church was organized under the divinely inspired government of the Church By-laws established by her in the Manual of The Mother Church. Only in this way could she leave a legacy that would not be subject to the wayward influences of ego and love of position and power.

Mrs. Eddy’s church had a board of four directors, and for a time, a temporary board of five directors. Three of the five members of this male element constituting the Board at the time of her passing had conspired to wrest control of her church from her. They thought that they were far more capable to run the church and the burgeoning Christian Science movement than a “little gray haired old lady.” Their disloyalty and lack of spiritual demeanor were indicative of why God always inspired her in taking whatever steps were necessary to preserve the integrity of what she had founded for the future benefit of mankind in the affairs of her church.

“General Frank S. Streeter, who was one of the ablest lawyers in New England, perhaps even in the United States, once asserted, according to his son’s testimony, that Mrs. Eddy knew more law than he did. Most probably Mrs. Eddy would have said that it was God who knew all law and it was He that told her what to do. But some of her Boston officials felt that they knew better. A good deal of ‘mental murder’ was going on among her directors and other officers by the last quarter of 1910. That is, they were thinking and discussing their belief that Mrs. Eddy will pass away before long. Some of them were also discussing how the organization would function without her controlling hand.

“Archibald McLellan was the lawyer on the Board of Directors and perhaps the one most concerned about some of the by-laws in the Manual. He was well aware, as he had once told Mr. [William Dana] Orcutt, that Mrs. Eddy ‘has left us nothing to conceive or originate—simply to carry on and to execute.’

“There were even a number of things which they could not carry on if they adhered to the by-laws in the Manual because Mrs. Eddy’s approval was required, often in writing. So a campaign began to induce Mrs. Eddy to change some of the by-laws that restricted the directors.

Adelaide Still was present on one occasion when one of the directors (probably Mr. McLellan) tried to get Mrs. Eddy to remove these restrictions from the Manual, but she refused.

“It may have been after this interview that she said to Mr. Dickey, in a voice filled with earnestness and pathos, that if she could find one individual, who was spiritually equipped, she would place him at the head of her church government. After she had said this she asked Mr. Dickey to take a pencil, and then dictated very slowly so that he would not miss one word:

I prayed God day and night to show me how to form my Church, and how to go on with it. I understand that He showed me, just as I understand He showed me Christian Science, and no human being ever showed me Christian Science. Then I have no right or desire to change what God had directed me to do, and it remains for the Church to obey it. What has prospered this Church for thirty years will continue to keep it.

“While Mrs. Eddy was talking with Adam Dickey, Mr. McLellan was explaining the dilemma he foresaw to William Rathvon.” 285

Rathvon and McLellan conspired with Clifford P. Smith, then First Reader of the Mother Church, in a plan to tell Mrs. Eddy that they would commit her to an asylum if she did not sign their proposed new by-law establishing them as an executive committee over the Board of Directors, replacing Mrs. Eddy, giving them authority to supervise the Board of Directors, and to make or change any by-laws. They attempted to recruit Judge Septimus Hanna in their plan to usurp Mrs. Eddy’s leadership. He told them that they were to go to her and immediately confess their plan and their disloyalty to her, and if they didn’t, he would! They refused, claiming that they had progressed too far to turn back now. Judge Hanna told Mrs. Eddy. Shortly after she told her faithful student, Ira O. Knapp, one of the directors at the time, he passed on.

“Mr. Knapp said he has a photostat of a letter Mr. Frye wrote and that Mrs. Eddy signed, where she said a cabal was formed, a triumvirate, to get themselves put above the Directors by having a change made in the Manual and thus to nullify the Manual. Mrs. Eddy evidently was not certain she could defeat their purposes. However, there was one way she could defeat them and that was by allowing herself to pass on. Then the Manual could not be changed. She chose this course and chose her own time to go. Thus she gave her life for the Manual and her Church, as Jesus gave his life to show the way and reveal the Christ.” 286

There are indications that she knew as early as three years before her passing when she would be “delivered up,” necessitating the protective measures in the Manual. On March 10, 1907, she made the following statement to a student in her home: (Divinity Course and General Collectanea, Richard Oakes, p.23-24)

From the beginning and all the way along, I got my leading from God, through the Bible. Right in the beginning I got—’Write it in a book and it shall be for all time.’ Today He is speaking to me again, Isaiah 16:14. ‘But now the Lord hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be contemned, with all that great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and feeble.’

I am sure this will be fulfilled, but don’t tell anyone about it.

“She knew in 1907 that she had three years to finish her work. She told more than one person that if she passed on it would be due to animal magnetism. If she ascended and only a few in her household knew it or perceived it, outsiders would assume they had hidden her body and the situation would become intolerable.

“She once said that she thought if Jesus was here now with the type of thinking present now, if he arose now after death, probably no one would have been able to perceive him.” 286a

While still at Pleasant View, her loved home, she said to Henrietta Chanfrau, “Henrietta, if I ever go away from here to another house, it will be to be delivered up to my enemies!” How true this prophetic statement proved to be. In fact in 1903 she had said to her students: “It was not the material cross that killed Jesus, but it was the desertion of his students that killed him.” Several days before she left us she dictated to her trusted student Laura Sargent, “It took a combination of sinners that was fast to harm me,” and signed it in her own hand. (see Doris Grekel’s The Forever Leader, page 583-4.)

But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed! And they began to inquire among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing. And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.Luke 22:21-27

The directors altered her Manual within days prior to her passing, illegally, without her consent, although purporting all the while the changes had been authorized by Mrs. Eddy. [Mrs. Eddy always made changes in her own handwriting, when it concerned her own writings.]

“Ira O. Knapp passed on three weeks before Mrs. Eddy did. Bliss Knapp [Ira Knapp’s son] asked Adam Dickey if Mrs. Eddy said anything about his father’s passing. Mr. Dickey said he told her there was a vacancy on the Board. She didn’t ask who it was. Evidently she knew. She then offered the position to Calvin Frye. He declined. She then offered it to Adam Dickey. He accepted. As both Calvin and Adam were her secretaries, she would not have appointed them if she had intended to stay [here, on this mortal plane]. On the Sunday before her passing, at the song service in her home, she said to continue to hold the service, ‘even though I will not be with you.’ She passed on the following Saturday night. They had thought that she meant she would stay in her room.” 287

Two days before her passing, Thursday, December 1, 1910, an interesting scene took place.

“. . . Mrs. Eddy’s helpers thought she was suffering from a cold. When it came time for her drive they said to her, ‘Don’t you think it would be wise, Mother, to stay at home today?’ Mrs. Eddy answered as she had for many years when her students voiced the lying suggestion instead of the scientific reality of being: ‘That’s right, talk with the devil!’ Mrs. Sargent opened her Bible and, after silently reading the passage she had opened to, she thought, ‘I wish I might ask Mother what this means.’ As Mrs. Eddy was arranging her bonnet she said, ‘Laura, do not bring your questions to me, take them to God. You lose your answer if you take them to me.’

“Laura Sargent accompanied her on her drive that day, and recorded one of the Leader’s last messages for her followers. During the drive Mrs. Eddy appeared to be thinking deeply and said aloud: ‘Oh! If the students had only done what I had told them to do, I should live and carry on the Cause.’

“When they returned from the drive Mrs. Eddy appeared very weak to those in her household. She asked for a pad which Ella Rathvon brought to her, and on it she wrote her last written message: ‘God is my life.’” 288

“The message I am about to impart is not only an important message for all Christian Scientists, but in my estimation it is the most important incident in Mrs. Eddy’s experience which proves without any doubt the infallibility of her complete demonstration of the revelation of Christian Science. . . . Twenty-five years ago I had the privilege of visiting all of the historical landmarks pertaining to Mrs. Eddy’s revelation of Christian Science.

“. . . Our last stop of this tour was Mrs. Eddy’s bedroom. . . . This room was homespun and expressed simplicity. . . . I was impressed to see several pictures of Jesus hanging on the walls. It was at this moment that my guide turned to me and said that she felt impelled to tell me what happened to Mrs. Eddy on December 3, 1910 [the day of her passing]. She went to the door of the bedroom to see if we were alone and then proceeded to tell me the following incident, which was told to her by Miss Adelaide Still, one of three persons watching with Mrs. Eddy in the final hours of her human experience. She told me that Miss Still had requested her not to repeat what she was about to tell me, because she had promised those in authority at the Boston headquarters of the Christian Science church never to speak of this experience to anyone. I can assure you that by this time I was not only awed but more than moved by what she was relating.

“On the night Mrs. Eddy passed her three valued and beloved workers were with her. They were Miss Adelaide Still, Mrs. Laura Sargent, and Mr Calvin Frye. On this eventful day in December, 1910 the furnace had ceased to function and a repair man had been summoned to fix it. When he arrived, Mr. Frye and Mrs. Sargent went downstairs to the first floor to admit the repair man. Mr. Frye accompanied him to the basement while Mrs. Sargent waited in the front hall. Miss Still was left sitting by Mrs. Eddy’s bed. In a short while the furnace was in working order and Mr. Frye and Mrs. Sargent hurried to the second floor to return to their post by Mrs. Eddy’s side. As they neared the bedroom they noticed that Miss Still was standing in the doorway. Approaching her side they looked into the bedroom and beheld Mrs. Eddy by the side of the bed smiling at them. Then Mrs. Eddy turned and pointed to the bed where they saw the form of the one they had called Mother. As their gaze turned again to Mrs. Eddy she was shaking her head back and forth as if to say, ‘I am not there; I have risen.’ Then as these three watched, the vision of their beloved Leader gradually faded from their sight.

“At that moment, as I stood there looking into Mrs. Eddy’s bedroom, I felt a wave of insight into the magnitude of Mrs. Eddy’s mission I had never felt before. They had witnessed the ascension of their Leader! . . . Before we returned to the entrance hall on the main floor, my guide, who had told me her name (which I have forgotten), expressed the importance of what she had related to me. She repeated that she felt impelled to tell me this incident, which she had heard from the lips of Adelaide Still—who was her sister.” 290

Prior to Mrs. Eddy leaving this experience [recorded in January, 1896], “she explained to [Calvin] Frye that, while David died and was buried and Jesus died but his body was raised again, the demonstration for her would ‘not be in death even, but a body transformed by the renewing of Mind [Mind with a capital ‘M’ is one of the synonyms for God—see pg. 587, Science and Health].’” 291

And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
Matt. 28:5-7

“It was the third day after Mrs. Eddy’s passing. In the room with the body, which lay on the bed, were Mrs. Elizabeth Norton and a Miss Grace Collins. In the room next to them were Mr. Frye and two of the Directors [of The Mother Church]. There was a great noise—almost like an explosion. The directors went to investigate—they went through the house and to the cellar and could find no cause for or results of the detonation. Immediately following this noise Mrs. Eddy appeared to Mrs. Norton and Miss Collins. She walked across the room and disappeared through the wall. She appeared as youth, dark hair, and most radiant. Mrs. Norton turned to Miss Collins and said: ‘Grace, did you see what I saw?’ Grace said, ‘Yes.’ Mrs. Norton told the directors what they had seen and the directors said it must not be told yet.” 292

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent. . . Matt. 27:50,51

Prior to her passing Mrs. Eddy had stated to a student that it was not old age that was affecting her, but rather a peculiar form of malicious animal magnetism that she had not been able to overcome. This was confirmed in an unsolicited report from the undertakers who were called to Mrs. Eddy’s home.

December 6, 1910
To Whom It May Concern:

We were called to the residence of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy in Chestnut Hill, Mass., at 8:15 A.M., Sunday December 4, 1910, to care for her body. We found it in an excellent state of preservation when first called, and also fifty-eight hours after death. No preserving compounds were used until that time. The tissues were remarkably normal; the skin was well preserved, soft, pliable, smooth and healthy. I do not remember having found the body of a person of such advanced age in so good a physical condition. The walls of the arteries were unusually firm and in as healthy a state as might be expected in the body of a young person. The usual accompaniments of age were lacking, and no outward appearance of any disease, no lesion or other conditions common to one having died at such an advanced age were noticeable.

In the process of embalming we found the body at sixty hours after death, in as good condition of preservation as we always find at twelve to twenty-four hours after death. This is our voluntary statement made without solicitation or influence of any kind.

Frank S. Waterman
George A. Pierce
Katherine M. Foote

January 26, 1911 marked the date that Mrs. Eddy was to be interred in Auburn Cemetery, Boston, Mass. For this occasion those in attendance, all men, had been issued tickets. It was a cold, gray and drizzling day, not a fit place for a woman. Yet, in the procession there was an unidentified woman. Who could she be? It was later presumed to be the funeral director—but she later denied she was at Mt. Auburn!

And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.
Mark 16:5-8

“Bliss Knapp was one of the pall-bearers. He said it did not feel as if there was any body in the casket.” 294

from The Healer by David Keyston