Spiritual Roots

The following testimony appears in the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, published in 1875, page 352:   "A lady at Louisiana wrote: - Your wonderful science is proved to me.  I was a helpless sufferer six long years, confined to my bed, unable to sit up one hour in the long, long twenty-four. All I know of my cure is this; the day you received my letter I felt a change pass over me, I sat up the whole afternoon, went to the table with my family at supper, and have been growing better every day since; I call myself well. Jenny R. Coffin.”

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The Louisiana lady was writing to Mary Baker Eddy who was living near Boston, MA. Before founding the worldwide Christian Science Church, Mrs. Eddy had various connections with New Orleans, such as writing a poem about Andrew Jackson’s victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and corresponding with Benjamin Butler, who became the city’s first Union General during Reconstruction. *

We’ve continued in our prayers for New Orleans and its citizens since that first published testimony about 150 years ago. Click on the image to watch inspirational messages with New Orleans and Gulf Coast photos and with original jazz music. This video was produced by a Christian Science Sunday School student as a prayerful response to the Gulf Oil Spill, but its healing message is still applicable today.

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"Christian Science and Christian Scientists will, must, have a history;"

 - Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, page 106:3

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* If you would like to learn more about New Orleans’ Spiritual Roots from a Christian Science perspective, you can take a free guided walking tour of the French Quarter, our city’s oldest neighborhood. These tours were started by one of our 4th Church members so that our visitors could appreciate New Orleans' unique culture, history, and architecture using the inspiration and vocabulary of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science. The tour lasts about two hours; it can be modified depending on your interests, and it usually begins in Jackson Square. To take a tour, contact cs4neworleans@gmail.com

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Are you interested in learning about the local Christian Science response to the 1918 flu epidemic? You can read that story here.