Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority

by Robert Peel

Peel, Robert, Mary Baker The Years Of Authority, 1892-1910

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

535 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1980

About the author

Sir Robert Peel,(NOT THE MODERN AUTHOR OF THE SAME NAME WHO WROTE BOOKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE) 2nd Baronet was the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846. He helped create the modern concept of the police force while Home Secretary (leading to officers being known as "bobbies", in England, or Peelers, in Ireland, to this day), oversaw the formation of the Conservative Party out of the shattered Tory Party, and repealed the Corn Laws.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE THIRD AND FINAL VOLUME OF PEEL'S AUTHORITATIVE BIOGRAPHY

Historian and journalist Robert Peel (1909-1992) was a significant ecumenical figure in Christian Science; he also wrote books such as 'Health and Medicine in the Christian Science Tradition: Principle, Practice, and Challenge,' 'Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age,' etc. The other two volumes in this series are 'Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery,'' Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial.'
He said in the "Prefatory Note" to this 1977 book, "The present volume completes a trilogy begun almost twenty years ago... The trilogy as a whole has involved the exploration of largely unmapped terrain... The rewards of the enterprise have been commensurate with the hazards." (Pg. xi)

He records, "Mrs. Eddy was determined to save her son for the great work she still hoped he might do... Several more years were to pass before Mrs. Eddy would have to make a conclusive choice between her adopted son and the movement she had hoped to see him serve. Few episodes in her life were to cause her more anguish and wavering, but her final decision was never basically in doubt." (Pg. 28-29)

Peel suggests that "Mrs. Eddy was above all else an author. Not a stylist, to be sure, a belletrist, a literary professional, or a journeyman drudge, but in a very deep sense a practitioner of the written word." (Pg. 88) He admits, however, that "Mrs. Eddy's own writings contained many unidentified quotations and unacknowledged literary borrowings, usually of a trivial sort... There is no evidence to explain this unmistakable borrowing, different in kind from the adaptation and incorporation of stray phrases or figures of speech from other writers... no theory of unconscious reproduction in quite sufficient to explain [this]... [such borrowing] stands squarely like a block of granite in the way of any future tendency by Christian Scientists to attribute to Mrs. Eddy's published articles the sort of textual or verbal infallibility that biblical literalists and fundamentalists have attributed to the Bible." (Pg. 106-108)

He deals at some length with the "Quimbyism" of her early manuscript, "Questions and Answers in Moral Science," and concedes that "some of the material in it did represent the residual influence of Quimby," and says that "the evidence of her unconscious as well as her conscious attitude to Quimby in her later years becomes important to the historian." (Pg. 232-234)

He also notes cases in which she was administered morphine, "although in other instances Mrs. Eddy endured almost mortal agony without making this concession... While some Christian Scientists have refused to believe in the possibility that such a situation could ever have arisen, some of Mrs. Eddy's critics have assumed a frequency in the occurrence of the attacks and an addiction to morphine which are entirely unsupported by the evidence." (Pg. 239)

Peel's biography is accepted by Christian Scientists themselves and is respected for its discovery of original source material, although there have been more recent (and less extensive) biographies. It is "essential reading" for anyone seriously studying the life of the Christian Science founder.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished rereading the third book in the Peel trilogy of the life of MBE, the discoverer of Christian Science. I loved the series. And I'd like to think that even if I weren't a CS, I would be totally engrossed in the story of this remarkable woman, and all she had to contend with in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She herself was learning right along with her students, how to put into practice the truths that had been revealed to her. I highlighted so many passages, I won't even begin to write them down. I just wish that Peel had somehow been able to include the relevant points of all his footnotes in the actual body of the text. This time through, at least, I highlighted the numbers that had relevant or interesting detail in the footnotes, so I could easily find them. (for example, in the 1890's, two doctors are quoted: "The older physicians grow, the more skeptical they become in the virtue of they own medicines." And, "Every dose of medicine is a blind experiment."

[Joanne Otto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peel affords us glimpses into the later years of this remarkable woman--her struggles and triumphs--with penetrating insight, both historical and spiritual.