ABSTRACT
Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) owed much in her philosophy to the clockmaker-healer, Phineas Quimby, who had aided her after she had experienced a period of pain and misery. None the less, it was she who became the fount of a variety of currents in American religion flowing within the same broad channel, that of New Thought. Neither mainstream revivalistic Protestantism, nor socially conscious religion, could reach all the restless Americans living in a world in flux. The Church of Christ (Scientist) was chartered in 1879 and from the 1880s onwards growing numbers of people derived comfort from Christian Science practitioners spreading out from New England. Practical application of Christian Science doctrine flowed from the basic idea expressed in Eddy's canonical text; real man, rather than 'mortal man', was an expression of God, of Mind. The everyday world experienced by mortals was thus illusory.
