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The Years of Discovery
Discovery: 1866 | page 283

● ● ●  them as a parent may treasure the memorials of a child’s growth, and she would not have them changed.”55

A single example will illustrate the gradual development of her thought, as made clear by the innumerable revisions she was constantly making in her Genesis manuscript. An early version declares:

In the science of the bible we learn that God is a Principle, Wisdom, and the opposite of matter, error. . . . That in the begining this principle created truth and as truth could not be without an opposite error, Truth & Error were the heavens and earth which were created.56

But this actually ran contrary to the conviction that was at the heart of her experience in February, and the logic of that conviction compelled revision. The next version read:

The eternal intelligence was a Principle[,] Love & Wisdom[,] love was the feminine and Wisdom the masculine . . .

. . . Love was a solution of intelligence before the ideas were formed by Wisdom[,] and [this solution is] compared to water[,] the emblem of purity[.] Earth[,] being but the idea or shadow of the Principle creating it[,] was dark and void i.e. the idea had no intelligence of its own and was without the identity Wisdom gave to it57

Although this uses Swedenborgian terms, also found to some extent in Quimby, and is still far removed from the simplicity of her final interpretation, it moves a little further toward Christian Science.58

55 [Eddy, Science and Health, p. ix (bracketed text Peel’s).]

56 [Mary Baker Glover, “The Bible in its Spiritual Meaning,” c. 1866–1869, A09000, pp. 4–5, MBEL.]

57 [Mary Baker Glover, “The Bible in its Spiritual Meaning,” c. 1866–1869, A09000, pp. 40–41, MBEL (bracketed text Peel’s).]

58 Swedenborgian terms were very much in the air. In “The Source of Science and Health,” Bibliotheca Sacra 85, no. 340 (October 1928): 417–423, Hermann S. Ficke attempted to establish Mrs. Eddy’s direct indebtedness to A Dictionary of Correspondences, Representatives, and Significatives, Derived from the Word of the Lord: Extracted from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (Boston: Otis Clapp, 1841). This tends to break down under close examination. For instance, Ficke puts the definition of “Ark” from the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures against the definition from the Dictionary of Correspondences as follows (p. 422): 

Swedenborg
 [ARK.] By the ark’s going forward, were represented combats and temptations. 		Mrs. Eddy
 [ARK.] The ark indicates temptations overcome, [sic] and followed by exaltation.

But when one turns to the full definition in the two books one finds the following in the Dictionary of Correspondences (pp. 17–18):

Ark, (the) represented heaven, in the supreme sense the Lord, consequently the divine good. A. C. 4926. Ark, sig. the inmost heaven. A. C. 9485. The translation of the ark (2 Sam. vi. 1–17,) sig. the progression of the church among men, from its ultimates to its inmost principles. Ap. Ex. 700. By the ark’s going forward, were represented combats and temptations. A. C. 85. By the ark resting, is sig. regeneration. A. C. 850, 851. By reason of the decalogue therein contained, the ark was the most holy thing of the church. D. L. W. 53, 61. Its going forth, sig. liberty. A. C. 903. (In Gen. viii.) it sig. the man of the ancient church who was to be regenerated. A. C. 896. Ark of Jehovah, (Num. x. 31–36,) sig. the Lord as to divine truth. Ap. Ex. 700. The ark, (in 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7,) represents the Lord, consequently all that is holy and celestial. A. C. 878. Noah’s ark (Gen. viii. 18,) sig. the state of the man of the most ancient church, before regeneration. A. C. 876.

The definition in Science and Health reads as follows (p. 581):

Ark. Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying belief in matter.

God and man coexistent and eternal; Science showing that the spiritual realities of all things are created by Him and exist forever. The ark indicates temptation overcome and followed by exaltation.

It is always a tricky matter to posit a direct cause-and-effect relationship on superficial verbal correspondences. In this case it seems safe to say only that Swedenborg and Mrs. Eddy were both interested in the “spiritual” rather than the literal interpretation of Scripture.