Throughout her life, Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, lived in an area of the United States prone to climatic extremes. Having grown up on a farm, she was certainly aware of the impact that weather conditions could have on people’s economic and physical well-being. And in teaching Christian Science, she identified weather forces as subordinate to God.
Irving Tomlinson was a student of Eddy and worked on her staff for a number of years. He described her approach to the weather this way:
Mrs. Eddy taught us that weather conditions are not beyond God’s control, and that they can be corrected through right prayer. She made it clear that Christian Scientists are not to attempt to control or govern the weather. We should know that God governs the weather and no other influence can be brought to bear on it. She said we are to be particularly watchful to guard against any disastrous effects of storms.
Eddy’s correspondence and other writings indicate that she specified violent weather elements in particular as requiring ongoing prayerful attention. …
Clara Knox McKee was Eddy’s personal maid in 1906 and 1907. She recounted an experience that helps to illustrate further the distinction Eddy made between attempting to control the weather and holding it as a subjective state of human consciousness:
One day Mrs. Eddy called her students into her study and pointed to a very black cloud, shaped like a cornucopia, coming toward the house in direct line with her front study window. She asked each one to go to a window and face it, and to realize that there were no destructive elements in God’s creation. While the cyclone came whirling straight toward Pleasant View, before it reached within a mile or so, it parted and went around Concord and into the mountains, doing very little damage in our neighborhood. …
Mary Baker Eddy’s convictions regarding God, prayer, weather, and climate grew out of her Christianity. As a student of the Bible, she read in the Hebrew Scriptures accounts of prophetic appeals to God in times of drought. She knew well the Gospel stories of Jesus Christ stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Unlike some others, however, Eddy came to believe that these incidents were neither miracles nor interruptions of the natural order. Instead, she classified them as demonstrations of divine law, which overruled what she identified as the limitations associated with laws of nature.
These statements are from an answer compiled by the researchers at the Mary Baker Eddy Library (menu option: Questions). The complete answer to the question: What did Mary Baker Eddy say about the weather? can be read here:
This recording is of the readings on the topic: Thy Presence Ever Goes with Me
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I love Thy way of freedom, Lord, To serve Thee is my choice, In Thy clear light of Truth I rise And, listening for Thy voice, I hear Thy promise old and new, That bids all fear to cease: My presence still shall go with thee And I will give thee peace.
(Hymn 136 from the Christian Science Hymnal – words by Violet Hay)
I look to Thee in every need, And never look in vain; I feel Thy touch, eternal Love, And all is well again: The thought of Thee is mightier far Than sin and pain and sorrow are.
Thy calmness bends serene above, My restlessness to still; Around me flows Thy quickening life To nerve my faltering will: Thy presence fills my solitude; Thy providence turns all to good.
Embosomed deep in Thy dear love, Held in Thy law, I stand: Thy hand in all things I behold, And all things in Thy hand. Thou leadest me by unsought ways, Thou turn’st my mourning into praise.
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Hymn 134 from the Christian Science Hymnal words by Samuel Longfellow.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (The Bible – Isaiah 41: 10)
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Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. (The Bible – Proverbs 3: 5, 6)
This recording is of the readings on the topic: Fear Not – for I am with you.
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Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.
We don’t know each other, but my heart goes out to you as reports continue to emerge about the invasion and attack of your homeland. Things may look very dark right now; perhaps your plans for the life you hoped to live seem shattered. I and many others are praying earnestly that you feel the palpable presence of God, good, bringing you strength, hope, and inspiration.
These prayers are inspired by the presence of God made evident throughout the Bible. In Psalms, we read, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?… If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me” (139:7, 11). God does know you and care for you, for everyone. God has not abandoned you. Even in the depths of despair, when we turn our hearts to God, we feel the light and grace of God’s presence and love right here to protect us.
My father experienced the power of this divine light after the start of World War II. When his homeland, Japan, declared war on the United States – the country that he had been preparing to go to throughout his education – his hopes and dreams were shattered. As war continued, he felt alone and completely isolated.
Yet one thing did carry him through those dark days. It was his faith in God, who is omnipresent good. The ideas contained in two books – the Bible and “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science – helped him understand that God’s goodness is always present, even in the midst of devastation and war. During the firebombing of Tokyo, as my father ran around dousing the burning embers that were falling on his family’s home, he felt a powerful sense that he actually lived in the kingdom of God, that it was within him, flooding his consciousness with light.
That’s always true for each of us as God’s creation. As God’s spiritual likeness we have a relation to God that is, as my father put it, “as inseparable and unseverable as that of a sunbeam to the sun” (Takashi Oka, “No enemies in the kingdom,” Christian Science Sentinel, April 28, 2003). That he was able to feel this in the midst of such destruction has been proof to me that the “still, small voice” of God can be heard even in the darkest moments.
This is the Christ, God’s communication of divine Love’s power and presence. Mary Baker Eddy expresses it this way: “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Science and Health, p. 332). The Christ continues to communicate to each of us right now, empowering us to feel the healing, guiding light of God even in the midst of the anger, fear, and destruction of war. It is in God’s very nature as divine Love to constantly communicate and express tender care and compassion for each of us, and to enable us to know our spiritual nature as His children.
This is a powerful and effective basis for prayer for all of humanity. Its truth encircles the globe, and I and so many others worldwide are wrapping you in our prayers to see that, truly, “no power can withstand divine Love” (Science and Health, p. 224).
Christian Science Canberra 