SOURCE: "The Dusky Genius of Mary Baker Eddy," in Ball State University Forum, Vol. XIV, No. 3, Summer, 1973, pp. 38-43.

In the following essay, Sowd examines the culture and theoretical background from which Christian Science came.

For Mark Twain, Mary Baker Eddy was "the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has appeared on the earth in centuries," and he wrote of her: "Closely examined, painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the planet, and in several ways as easily the most extraordinary woman that was ever born upon it."

But, contrary to what is most often asserted by her biographers, Mrs. Eddy did not operate in some sort of cultural vacuum; like Thoreau, she was truly "born in the nick of time," and if she was extraordinary, it is precisely because she managed so perfectly to embody the peculiar concerns of the age and...