About
In 1879, Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, and some of her students voted “to organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.”* Today there are branch churches of The Mother Church similar to ours, throughout the world.
*Manual of the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts
By Mary Baker Eddy
Beginnings of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Daytona Beach
In the year 1898, a Daytona resident, Mrs. Margaret A. Barnes, went to visit a friend whom she had known as an invalid up in St. Augustine, Florida. To her amazement, the friend was now in robust health, and gave the credit to Christian Science. She encouraged Mrs. Barnes, often in poor health herself, to inquire at her local public library for a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. To her surprise, the Daytona Library had a copy, presented by a visitor from Cleveland, Ohio.
She began reading it, but it seemed at first “like Greek” to her. She persisted in reading it however, since she had promised her friend she would. Halfway through she began to get “glimpses of the Light.” Before she finished the book, she applied what she was learning to heal her little boy of a recurring condition of hoarseness and croup. Soon she herself was healed of many fears and a bad temper, and of a discharge in her ear of 19 years duration.
Seeing the change in her, her husband soon took up the study of Christian Science, and they began holding services in their home in 1899, in hopes of sharing this Science of divine Truth and Love. One of the first attendees was healed of a type of tuberculosis in two weeks. Gradually the little group grew, becoming a Christian Science Society in 1911, and opening the doors of its new church building at 137 Live Oak Avenue as First Church of Christ, Scientist, Daytona, Florida on January 5, 1917, where it has been continuously active for over 100 years.
Margaret Barnes' article fromThe Christian Science Journal in the November1899 issue.