Emergence: 1870
In 1870 the American edition of a book by a French evangelical leader, E. de Pressensé, was published under the title The Early Years of Christianity. Some years later the book found its way into Mrs. Eddy’s library, and was carefully read and marked by her. One of the scored passages refers to the skepticism made fashionable by Strauss and Renan:
We are persuaded that the best method of defense against the shallow skepticism which assails us, and which dismisses, with a scornful smile, documents, the titles of which it has never examined, is to retrace the history of primitive Christianity, employing all the materials accumulated by the Christian science of our day; for it must be well understood among us that there is in truth such a thing as Christian science in the nineteenth century.1
The history of primitive Christian Science, with its abundant documentation, affords an extraordinary opportunity to observe closely the genesis and evolution of a new religion. Moreover, an understanding of the nineteenth-century New England phenomenon can throw light ● ● ●
1 E. de Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity, vol. 1, The Apostolic Era, trans. Annie Harwood (New York: Carlton and Lanahan, 1870), p. 5, B00165, MBEL. The words “Christian Science,” as Pressensé uses them, obviously have an entirely different meaning from that given them by Mrs. Eddy.
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